While highlighting the significance of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) for the small businesses, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Secretary, DPIIT said that on the platform, 70% are the medium and small size sellers.
“ONDC was created primarily to democratise and make digital commerce accessible to smaller players, and that has also started gaining traction over the last couple of years,” he added.
In a media interaction on the sidelines of ONDC Startup Mahotsav, the Secretary said, “On ONDC platform, we have nearly 5 lakh seller, out of which around 70% are the medium and small size sellers.”
“In April 2024, ONDC facilitated 7.22 million transactions,” he told.
Speaking about the ONDC Startup Mahotsav, the Secretary said the DPIIT is trying to create a synergy between the startup ecosystem and its other pioneering initiative like ONDC.
Talking about the India’s startup ecosystem, he said the country has 1.3 lakh startups in over 55 sectors and it has been creating lakhs of jobs.
Equal opportunity to every player
On a question from ETBFSI, on the special arrangement for MSMEs on ONDC, as well as the need for a training module, T Koshy, MD & CEO, ONDC said the platform is democratising and giving equal opportunity to every player.
“This is true that the big players can come themselves at ONDC, but the same is not possible with the small entities,” he said.
Highlighting the steps taken for ease of SMEs, he said, “To help them, we have partnered with SIDBI, NABARD and other entities to make their onboarding process easy on ONDC.”
On the training module for the small players, he said, “We have ONDC Academy which is available in seven other languages apart from English. We have also introduced ONDC Sahayak on Whatsapp in multiple languages to make the process understandable for the small entities.”
“We are continuously working towards making the information feasible and accesible for the small enterprises.”
12 Unicorns, over 125 startups commit to onboarding ONDC
Joint Secretary, DPIIT, Sanjiv Singh said the biggest issue for the startups was to find a platform. It couldn’t have been better than ONDC.
Sharing the development at the ONDC Startup Mahotsav, he said 12 unicorns, as well as, 150 budding startups have signed the Letter of Intent (LoI) at the event.
On the success of Indian Startups, he cited the gaming platform Winzo’s success journey in Brazil, and said that the Indian startups are not only doing good in the country but also outperforming globally.
Notably, over 125 ecosystem stakeholders including startups, unicorns and high growth businesses such as EaseMyTrip, OfBusiness, Winzo, Livspace, GlobalBees, Pristyn Care, Cars24, Physics Wallah, PolicyBazaar, and Zerodha, signed Letter of Intent (LoI) during the event.
