The Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) will start a beta-testing phase next month in one city so that any user in the area can place an order for groceries and food, according to people aware of the development.
The company is yet to select one city out of a list consisting of Bengaluru, Delhi, Shillong, Bhopal and Coimbatore. These cities saw the first batch of pilots start in April.
"It's currently only open to a select group of whitelisted users in 55 cities. The plan is to gradually go live for anyone in a city where the network is operational," said a source in the know.
"At the end of the day, it's a network and not a platform. That's why multiple things can go wrong and it is better to go live-for-all in cities one by one," he added.
According to the source, Kotak Mahindra Bank and payments company PhonePe are almost done with their integration as buyer apps with the network and may go live in September. Hindustan Unilever’s e-commerce platform UShop is at an advanced stage of integration and might also go live by next month as a seller app.
Moneycontrol reported in June that FMCG players like ITC, Unilever, Dabur and Nivea were in talks to join ONDC. The open network for e-commerce is also exploring ways to build a system that will help the FMCG companies offer separate deals and price points to distributors, retailers and individual consumers.
While buyer apps will be consumer-facing platforms on the network, the platforms that will link merchants to the networks are called seller apps.
At present, Paytm Mall is the only buyer side app that is live on the network since the pilot started a few months ago. The seller side apps which are currently live are Digiit and Go Frugal for groceries, e-Samudaay for groceries and F&B, Growth Falcons for F&B, and Seller App for groceries and home and decor.
Dunzo and Loadshare are the only hyperlocal delivery platforms that have integrated with ONDC till now.
Earlier this month, tech giant Microsoft joined the interoperable e-commerce programme backed by the Indian government. The company said that it plans to launch a shopping app for group buying which will be integrated with ONDC. This also makes Microsoft the first among big tech peers like Amazon, Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) to join the network.
The open network seeks to increase e-commerce penetration in the country to 25 percent in the next two years, reaching 900 million buyers and 1.2 million sellers through the open network, while hitting the $48-billion mark in terms of gross merchandise value.
In April, the network piloted a soft launch in five cities – Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Shillong, Bhopal and Coimbatore. Dynamic pricing, inventory management and optimisation of delivery cost are the three important pillars that ONDC is banking on to reduce the cost of doing business for everybody, including retailers.
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