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After being launched in Bengaluru last month, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is now making a move towards the Capital city. As per reports, it is slated to go live in selected pin codes of New Delhi starting November, and will advance to Mumbai shortly after.
ONDC is a government-backed digital commerce protocol which was launched for Beta Testing across 16 pin codes in Bengaluru on 30th September – the first public rollout after months of testing with select users across cities. Similar to the operating strategy in Bengaluru, for Delhi too, the consumers can place their orders in two domains – groceries and restaurants – through any buyer apps participating on the ONDC network. Users would also be able to order electronics, fashion products, and home decoration items by the end of the year, according to reports.
Also read: ONDC to charge 75% less commission than other e-commerce giants from merchants
A source in know of the matter said that how fast ONDC scales across India will depend on the capabilities of the logistics firms to carry out inter-city deliveries. They added that logistics partners Ecom Express, Ekart, and Grab will also be operational in these cities starting in November.
At present, LoadShare and Dunzo are helping fulfil hyperlocal deliveries in Bengaluru, where the sellers are still trying to understand the operating model of the ONDC system. In a positive initial trend, the number of orders have increased by 30% each day and almost 170 orders were placed via the protocol on the first day in Bengaluru. The orders though, are mostly for groceries and food takes up a smaller share, say the sellers.
The ONDC platform lies in the middle of the interfaces hosting the buyers and the sellers. So far, the buyer side interface is being hosted by Paytm, whereas the seller side interface is being hosted by other players like GoFrugal, etc. When a buyer searches for an item on the Paytm app, from where ONDC has gone live, the app will connect to the ONDC platform, which will connect it to seller side interfaces that will list all the companies from where you can buy the particular item. On ONDC, there will be several other backend partners such as logistics service providers, enterprise resource planners, e-commerce store hosting service providers, etc.
