ONDC Expands Beta Live Coverage To Mumbai, Delhi NCR, 3 Other Cities

The Indian government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) on Wednesday (July 5) said that the platform has gone Beta live in five more cities – Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.

ONDC went live in these new cities after scaling the seller density over the past few months. Currently, the network has over 40,000 sellers, out of which more than 18,000 sellers operate from these five cities, a statement said.

ONDC made a soft launch in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong, and Coimbatore in April last year. In September, the platform was opened to the public in Bengaluru and later went Beta live in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut in December.

As per ONDC, the main objective behind going Beta live is to allow consumers to experience the open network for the first time, collect real-time feedback, and also test the network at scale before the pan-India rollout.

“We hope that with this Beta announcement, more and more businesses will be inclined to join us, benefiting from an early-mover advantage. Additionally, as we touch more consumer territories, it also gives us the insights and opportunities to improve the network,” said T Koshy, MD and CEO of ONDC.

Incorporated in December 2021, ONDC is an initiative by the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) to democratise ecommerce in the country, enabling greater penetration of retail ecommerce in India.

Within a year of initiation of its operation in different Indian cities, ONDC has received significant interest from private ecommerce players, logistics startups, payments platforms, and banks, among several others. The startups including PhonePe, Paytm, Delhivery, Dunzo, Shiprocket, and Snapdeal have also integrated their services with the ONDC in the recent past.

The open platform is currently available across over 235 cities and offers services across food, grocery, electronics, fashion, and mobility segments.

Earlier this year, ONDC forayed into the mobility segment by onboarding Bengaluru-based auto booking platform Namma Yatri on its network. Koshy also told Inc42 last month that the platform was looking to venture into the financial products and services segment in a few months.

In May this year, ONDC claimed its daily transaction jumped to 25,000 orders in the first week of the month from merely 50 in January 2023.

In an attempt to help the network grow, Google Cloud recently launched an accelerator programme for ONDC, under which it plans to provide the participants of the open platform with a grant of up to $25,000 along with several other tech facilities.