Govt wants main platforms to come to ONDC, not new e-comm apps for joining

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal

The government wants the main platform of e-commerce companies to join the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), rather than build a new app to join the network, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said.

"I would tell Koshy (ONDC chief) to exclude those e-commerce platforms which are not coming to the network with their main platforms. Some are building ONDC-specific platforms. That's not our aim," said Goyal.

"If you do that, while you are taking the benefit of ONDC by availing of the sellers, but you are not giving your consumer base the benefit of choice of buying from any of the sellers," he added.

This comes weeks after Walmart-owned PhonePe launched a hyperlocal commerce app called Pincode on ONDC. Moneycontrol also reported earlier that Axis Bank is building an app specifically for ONDC.

Pincode, a buyer app that focuses on hyperlocal commerce, can be downloaded from both Google Play and the App Store. It offers six major categories, including grocery, food, pharma, electronics, home decor, and fashion. The app is currently only available in Bengaluru, but there are plans to expand to other cities, with the expansion limited to no more than 10 cities in the first year. Customers can search for stores by browsing categories and have multiple carts with one active cart per store. They can also save multiple carts for future use.

"We were grappling with the problems arising out of big tech in the e-commerce space, a threat to small retail across the country. It might not be tomorrow...one can say 3-4% of retail-only e-commerce now, but we have a long-term vision. And this government is desirous of crystal gazing into the future to plan the destiny of 140 crore Indians," said Goyal.

The minister, however, said that ONDC will not work to the detriment of anybody and all retailers -- big and small -- are invited to join the network.