To begin with, consumers in the IT capital will be able to buy groceries, food and beverages online from about 70 sellers on the platform (in the groceries category) who can be discovered through four customer-facing apps– Paytm Mall, IDFC FIRST Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and PhonePe.
Network participants, who held a day-long meeting in Bengaluru on Thursday, told ET they discussed settlement flows, refunds, dispatch, fill rate, and shipping time, which has been tested over the past three months. They also debated if service level agreements and network policies can be met and followed, they added.
“We have ensured that across all these pin codes of Bengaluru at least two sellers are available within a four kilometre radius with at least 1,500 SKUs (stock keeping units). The city has been mapped with the sellers accordingly,” said Dilip Vamanan, Co-founder of SellerApp.
From the orders already made by a curated list of customers in the city, the network found that the order rate is good, fulfillment is almost 100%, with no cancellations, late delivery or shipping issues, people in the know told ET.
When contacted ONDC CEO T Koshy and Chief Business Officer Shireesh Joshi refused to divulge any details on the network’s launch for the public.
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ETtechHyper local network
ONDC, a government-backed initiative to promote open networks for the exchange of goods and services over digital platforms began as a pilot in five Indian cities on April 29 including Bengaluru, New Delhi, Bhopal, Shillong, and Coimbatore across grocery, food and beverages segments.
Industry experts are of the view that while the network aims to dilute the dominance of large ecommerce firms like Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon India, it is primed to also do what the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) has done to digital commerce—expand the space and make the service accessible even at the grassroots level.
Deepak Sharma, Chief Digital Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of the four customer-facing apps on ONDC told ET that the bank with its large consumer and merchant base offers a wide variety of e-commerce categories with Kaymall on its mobile app.
“With ONDC, we will (now) offer a wider hyper local choice including embedded payment, lending and other financial services stack. This is part of our super app roadmap,” Sharma said
Although the network initially had an ambitious target of being active in 100 cities by August it has successfully undertaken pilot operations in 60 cities, so far.
While on the buyer side, only Paytm has been active in the past few months, on the seller side, Digiit, eSamudaay, Gofrugal Technologies, Growth Falcons, and SellerApp have all been operational.
“We are in sync with the ONDC plan, and will go live along with the network. We fully endorse and support the ONDC vision of democratising commerce in the country as it will provide visibility to a large network of sellers on its platform and enable customers to access a wider assortment of goods and services,” a representative for Paytm Mall said.
Dunzo and LoadShare are two logistics service providers ONDC has onboarded.
While Digiit has integrated with Load Share and Dunzo for its sellers to deliver through ONDC, sellers have the option to also deliver to customers directly.
Currently, Digiit has around 60 sellers spread across 20 cities in five states out of which Bengaluru has 10 sellers and will be adding 10 more sellers in the coming weeks.
“We have sellers in all three segments Groceries, F&B and Home Décor but ONDC will open to the public in Groceries and F&B as the first categories for beta testing for the public in Bengaluru,” said Niranchana Karthik, MD of Digiit, which manages the quality of the service through its centralized operation centre and assists with any challenges on the order and delivery.
Girish Pai, CEO, Growth Falcons, another seller-side app, told ET, the network is targeting less than a minute for the order acceptance time. “Just like Swiggy and Zomato, orders can either be auto accepted or manually accepted by restaurants in the food and beverages category,” he said.
After five or six minutes have elapsed, if the merchant does not accept orders, it will be automatically cancelled.
Infrastructure Woes
Asked if Bengaluru’s torrential rain and consequently damaged roads will hamper the user experience with delayed deliveries once the network is opened to public, Digiit’s Karthik said the “rain will increase the adoption of ONDC as a greater number of customers may look online to get their groceries and food.”
“Choosing Bengaluru is the right choice. It has a good number of consumers with a tech background. Buyer apps have a good consumer base. The use of online penetration is relatively higher. Consumers provide feedback, which is very important for the maturity of the network. Also, we have a good density of sellers and consumers in Groceries and F&B,” he added.
