With growing user base, ONDC can start a price-war in ecomm market: Report

The non-profit e-commerce platform, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has garnered a lot of traction in the recent past. The platform can trigger a price war in India, a recent report from GlobalData suggests.

According to the report, ONDC has received a large number of users since its launch in 2022. However, the new e-commerce platform has a long way to go before it can match the technological and service capabilities of companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato, and others. 

Nonetheless, ONDC has started gaining critical mass with more customers and vendors signing up for the platform, thereby leading a price war in the e-commerce market in India, which is expected to cross the $100 billion mark by next year.

The beta version of the ONDC website was launched in September 2022, and since then, the platform has been witnessing an uptick in the number of its vendors and users, reported Economic Times. 

It operates as a website or an application that can be integrated into other online shopping or food-ordering apps, like Paytm, PhonePe, Magicpin, and Meesho.

Both vendors and consumers can save considerable costs on their transactions as ONDC operates without charging any third-party service fee.

Bobby Verghese, Consumer Analyst at GlobalData, commented on the same and said, "After the BHIM unified payment interface and the RuPay credit card, the ONDC is the latest initiative of the Indian Government to build a digital economy. The government launched the ONDC as an open online sales platform for large, medium, and small-scale businesses".

He further adds that ONDC operates as a direct-to-consumer sales platform for manufacturers, traders, and food service operators, and can accelerate the digitalisation of India’s huge unorganized sector.