Technology for MSMEs: The network has grown to more than 45 network participants and over eight categories with a weekly average of more than 13,000 retail orders with peak transactions reaching 25,000 retail orders a day.
Technology for MSMEs: Hailing the government’s open e-commerce project Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday highlighted the growth in the number of sellers or merchants on the network. The minister at the ONDC Elevate event — to commemorate ONDC’s one-year completion — said that a significant number of sellers on the network is itself a testimony to its impact as digital commerce is being reimagined.
According to the data shared at the event on the milestones achieved in the past year by ONDC, the latter has scaled to 36,000 sellers since its beta launch on September 29, 2022. Moreover, the network has grown to more than 45 network participants and over eight categories with a weekly average of more than 13,000 retail orders with peak transactions reaching 25,000 retail orders a day, the commerce ministry noted in a statement.
T Koshy, MD & CEO at ONDC said that from five cities to 236 cities, the network has continuously evolved with diverse participation of merchants.
According to the details shared in a statement earlier this month by ONDC, the network saw “quantum leaps especially in the last few months,” as till January 2023, only more than 800 sellers were registered.
Starting with grocery and food delivery segments, the network added fashion, beauty & personal care, and electronics & appliances in January this year with more than 600 merchants and over 1,300 transactions till the second week of May.
ONDC hosts multiple participants such as buyers, sellers, logistics companies, etc. When a shopper searches for a product on any of the buyers’ apps such as Paytm, the ONDC platform connects him/her to listed sellers that show up merchants from where the shopper can purchase the product.
ONDC’s growth with the digitisation of MSME sellers assumes importance as according to a report by consulting firm Bain & Company in collaboration with venture capital firm Accel last year, more than 15 million MSMEs are projected to buy and sell online from earlier 6 million and create 7 million jobs as well by 2027 from over 3 million earlier.
This would be accompanied by a 400 million to 450 million online shopper base as marketplaces are slated to collectively achieve over $350 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) and create $400 billion to $500 billion in enterprise value in five years.
