Over the next few days, ride-hailing app Ola is planning to launch its grocery delivery service via the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). This is as per a report by Moneycontrol.
Speaking to Moneycontrol, a source said, “Ola enables more than 30 percent of ONDC food orders in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR in its efforts to capture a significant market share of the online food ecosystem in the immediate term. Further, it is also leveraging its core expertise in the logistics domain by offering EV-based logistics services at a highly competitive price to smaller sellers on the ONDC network.”
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Interestingly, after Magicpin, Ola is already the second-largest buyer-side platform in the food category, according to the report. The company obtained over a third of the market in areas like Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR and reportedly witnessed around 15,000–20,000 orders per day.
To provide food delivery services, Ola joined ONDC last year. Speaking to Moneycontrol, a source said, “This is big for Ola; this is likely to compete with Swiggy and others... This feature is not available for everyone—only a handful of users for now—and is likely to be open to all.”
This is not the first time Ola has ventured into the grocery delivery business. The company first tried its hands in 2015 with the launch of a standalone grocery store in Bengaluru. However, it ceased its operation after nine months.
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In 2021, Ola started a ten-minute grocery delivery service in both Mumbai and Delhi. While highlighting that they were delivering 1,000 orders per day, the company had said that they would expand to 300 dark stores. However, within a year, the operation shut down, and all the dark stores were closed.
Meanwhile, recently, an official from ONDC said that they reached the $10 million transaction mark in June. On a month-on-month basis, the open network platform is adding one million transactions.
