ONDC Hits Record 53,000 Retail Orders In A Day

The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has received bumper offers after it hit a fresh peak of 53,000 orders on 8 October.

A tiny amount of electronics, home furnishings, and other products that fall under the retail transaction category are also included in the figure.

Industry sources believe that players like Magicpin, Paytm, Ola, and PhonePe have an extra incentive to step on the accelerator to push sales during the festive season, which also coincides with the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup, since the government-backed e-commerce network is raising its incentive levels for platforms starting on 3 October.

An internal ONDC slideshow which was made available to Moneycontrol, showed that from 1,281 in January to 6,08,307 in September, retail purchases on the network increased by about 500 times.

Industry experts believe that lower fees on the network compared to big e-commerce firms like Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, and Swiggy have allowed sellers and network partners to provide better rates to customers, in addition to the promotions and discounts financed by ONDC.

According to the ONDC presentation, there have been 200 percent more grocery transactions in the past two months, over 470 cities have had seller penetration, and there are now over 75,000 sellers on the network.

Concurrently, the network has seen a surge in ride-hailing transactions, which increased by over 4,000 times from roughly 700 in January to roughly 27 lakh in September.

From its current peak of 1,60,000 transactions per day, ONDC is aiming to reach 2,00,000 transactions by the end of 2023.

In the south, in places like Bengaluru, Mysuru, and Kochi, ONDC has already launched ride-hailing services. Currently, the company is trying to expand to additional cities around the nation.

With the Namma Yatri app, the network's mobility vertical is already providing about one lakh trips per day in Bengaluru, undermining the dominance of big ride-hailing services like Ola and Uber. There have already been more than 1 crore, trips completed over the app after a year of operations. Additionally, it has over Rs 150 crore in driver earnings, almost 20 lakh registered users, and 95,000 registered drivers.