PhonePe's ONDC app Pincode expands to nine more cities after Bengaluru

Pincode is PhonePe's dedicated app for ONDC

PhonePe’s dedicated app for the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Pincode, has expanded operations to a total of 10 cities, after its Bengaluru launch yielded desired results, the company said on July 4.

While the 10-city expansion was part of Pincode's initial plans stated three months back, the company had said it would not enter other new regions in its first year. The aim was to drive efficiencies rather than just grow in size.

Keeping that goal in mind, Pincode entered key cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Chennai and Hyderabad. Services will also be available in Ahmedabad, Pune, and Kolkata, it added.

“The initial response and rapid consumer adoption of Pincode has given us the confidence to expand our services. Pincode is committed to growing the ecosystem, and we will continue expanding our category offerings and scaling our presence nationwide," Lalit Singh, General Manager, Pincode, said.

“In the coming months, we have ambitious plans for expansion into more cities,” he added. The plans to scale operations come at a time when Pincode is much smaller in scale compared to other apps such as Zomato-backed Magicpin.

Pincode had earlier said it was completing 5,000 orders a day which was far behind Magicpin which claims to be fulfilling 30,000 daily orders and is the largest seller app on ONDC.

To be sure, more than 70 percent of the total orders — across both platforms — are only groceries, with categories such as pharma, fashion, and electronics, which have a higher average order value (AOV), accounting for a much smaller share.

Category and city expansion is key if ONDC wants to reach the scale it has in mind. In the past ONDC said its aim is to increase the penetration of e-commerce to 25 percent, from about 5 percent currently, in the next two years by reaching 900 million buyers and having 1.2 million sellers which will likely lead to having a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $48 billion.