ONDC Partners NABARD To Bring Ecommerce To Agritech

The government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is working to bring ecommerce to agriculture with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).

ONDC and NABARD are organising the NABARD-ONDC Grand Hackathon on 1st-3rd July 2022, with applications to be accepted till 28th June. The event aims to connect agritech players with market-ready Farmers Producers Organisations (FPOs). The hackathon will also look to promote the adoption of ecommerce in the agriculture domain.

ONDC’s CEO T Koshy told ET that this was the first initiative to introduce FPOs to technology. NABARD and ONDC will be planning more Grand Challenges across multiple states in partnership with state governments and the Ministry of MSME.

Koshy noted that the hackathon has 400 participants, out of which 250 are agritech startups while the rest are non-agritech ventures. According to Koshy, the agritech startups include the likes of Ninjacart, Agmart and John Deere, among others. Zoho, Find.ai and Tata Cummins are among the non-agritech participants in the hackathon.

“NABARD is one of the earlier investors in ONDC. We decided to adopt a programmatic approach to encourage rural tech innovations, and give them an opportunity to experiment in ONDC. With interesting problem statements, they can test their solutions and will be provided with some hand-holding in terms of finance. This is to help products of diverse sellers/artisans be available in the market,” Koshy said.

Koshy added, “All the challenges presented will be some essential building blocks of transactions. Participants can build businesses and monetise their solutions. The winner of the hackathon can also make it available to associations or other businesses.”

The Indian government has been working on ONDC since July 2021, aiming to promote open networks developed on open-sourced methodology, using open specifications and open network protocols independent of any specific platform. The platform was officially launched on December 31, 2021.

The ONDC has seen investment from many of the government’s arms, including NABARD. Apart from the government, many public and private banks have invested in the ecommerce network. Starting with the Punjab National Bank picking up a 9.5% stake in ONDC for INR 25 Cr in November 2021, the State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank acquiring a collective 31.36% stake.

In April, the government kicked off a pilot for ONDC in five cities – Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong and Coimbatore.

In all, there are around 24 Indian startups looking to join ONDC in one capacity or other, along with established companies such as Paytm Mall and tech giants such as Google.