ONDC Rolls Out Saarthi To Help Businesses Build Customised Buyer Apps

The government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has rolled out a multilingual reference application designed to assist business owners in building their own customised buyer-side apps.

The Bhashini-powered app, named as Saarthi, will offer a comprehensive framework to help seamless integration with ONDC. 

With an initial support to five languages, including Hindi, English, Marathi, Bangla and Tamil, the app will further be extended to all the 22 languages, according to a statement.

“By providing a reference application that enables businesses to create multilingual buyer apps, we are breaking down language barriers and opening up new avenues for engagement and growth,” said T Koshy, MD and CEO at ONDC. 

Bhashini was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2022, aimed at providing language technology solutions as digital public goods. In September last year, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) collaborated with Bhashini to launch Hello! UPI, a voice-enabled UPI payments feature.

Yesterday (September 10), ONDC roped in former chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) R S Sharma as its non-executive chairperson.

The network is currently trying to diversify its offerings and scale up its presence in different sectors. 

For instance, ONDC ventured into the fintech space with the launch of 6 minutes credit offerings in August. It is also planning to launch insurance and mutual funds products in coming months. 

Reportedly, the network also plans to unveil credit card offerings in partnership with Mastercard.

Notably, the network, which claims to be online in over 611 cities with 111 network participants, recently crossed 12 Mn monthly ecommerce transactions in July, of which 4.4 Mn came from the mobility domain.