Ola Looking To Expand Its F&B Segment On ONDC

Ride hailing major Ola is soon looking to expand its food and beverage (F&B) vertical on the open network for digital commerce (ONDC) across India.

Speaking at the launch of ONDC’s white paper, “Driving Digital Inclusion: Open Networks and Zero-Commission Mobility Apps”, its managing director and chief executive officer Thampy Koshy said that Ola is amongst the top two platforms on ONDC which generates high demand in the F&B segment.

“Ola has informed ONDC that they will go pan-India soon in the F&B category. It also recently started doing grocery and will be adding other segments soon,” Koshy said.

It is pertinent to note that Ola currently offers F&B services via ONDC, but only in limited cities. 

Apart from food delivery, Ola also offers last-mile logistics services for all categories, including food delivery, grocery shopping, and pharmaceuticals via ONDC.

This comes at a time when Ola’s close rivals, Uber and Rapido have also joined the ONDC bandwagon to expand their various services.

While Rapido offers Chennai Metro Rail (CMRL) tickets directly through the ONDC platform, Uber inked a pact with the network to expand its range of mobility offerings earlier this year.

A few months back, union-backed ride hailing service Namma Yatri also partnered with ONDC to start its auto and cab rental services. 

The newly launched ONDC paper claimed that the number of transactions on ONDC rallied nearly 3X since December last year. The transaction count is further expected to grow 7-8X by December 2025.

It is pertinent to mention that ONDC witnessed 14 Mn transactions in October. Nearly 5.5 Mn transactions from these came from the mobility segment and 8.4 Mn came from non-mobility segments.

With the increase in this number, ONDC has also been making changes to its commission structure. Earlier this month, it trimmed the incentive for network participants to INR 40 Lakh for December from INR 60 Lakh offered during the festive season in October.