The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) hit a peak of 53,000 orders in a single day on October 8, the day of India’s match against Australia in the Cricket World Cup.
Driven by a buffet of deals and discounts introduced for the festive season, the figure also includes electronics, home decor, and other items part of the retail transaction category.
The government-backed e-commerce network has been stepping up its incentive levels for platforms since October 3.
Grocery/retail
Retail purchases on ONDC rose nearly 500 times from 1,281 in January to 608,307 in September.
Apart from deals and discounts funded by ONDC, industry executives feel lower commissions on the network compared to e-commerce majors like Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, and Swiggy have allowed sellers and network players to offer better prices to consumers.
According to an internal slideshow from ONDC, grocery transactions have grown 200 percent in the last 2 months, the number of sellers on the network crossed 75,000 in September, and seller penetration has increased to over 470 cities.
Ride-hailing transactions on the network took off as well, growing almost 4,000-fold from around 700 in January to about 2.7 million in September.
Mobility vertical
ONDC’s mobility pilot in Kolkata, started in July, has already seen around 250,000 completed trips, 365,000 registered users, 18,600 registered driver partners, and around Rs 7 crore in driver earnings.
In Bengaluru, the mobility vertical is already doing almost 1 lakh rides per day through the Namma Yatri app affecting the dominance of established players such as Ola and Uber.
Having completed just one year, the app has seen more than 10 million trips completed, over Rs 150 crore in driver earnings, almost 2 million registered users, and 95,000 registered drivers.
The network is expecting to hit 200,000 transactions a day by the end of the year from the current 160,000 transactions.
The government is also working to bring financial products to ONDC in the next couple of months.
Moving forward
For its next phase of growth, ONDC has a variety of plans in place.
To popularise it in tier 2 and 3 cities and beyond, it has started an online educational course for merchants it will provide in 14 to 18 languages.
Secondly, Doordarshan will soon begin regular programming to educate buyers and sellers about ONDC across the country.
Targets
The government hopes to boost e-commerce penetration in the country to 25 percent over the next two years, reaching 900 million buyers and 1.2 million sellers through the network.
It is projected to generate a gross merchandise value of $48 billion.
It is relying on three key pillars to reduce the cost of doing business via dynamic pricing, inventory management, and delivery cost optimization.
