PhonePe's ONDC app Pincode now completing 5,000 orders a day

Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO of PhonePe, at the launch of Pincode

PhonePe’s app for the Open Network for Digital Commece (ONDC), Pincode, on May 12 said it is delivering over 5,000 orders per day and has more than 50,000 downloads across both Play Store and App store.

Pincode, which is available only in Bengaluru for now, is being used for groceries and food deliveries. It was understood that groceries orders accounted for over 60-65 percent of the 5,000 daily orders, while food delivery enjoyed a smaller share. The company did not comment on the split across categories.

The milestone at Pincode comes after Zomato-backed Magicpin, also a seller app on the network, said it was processing 10,000 orders per day, thanks to the growing popularity of the ONDC across cities, especially Bengaluru – which accounts for about 40 percent of total orders placed on ONDC.

Driven by discounts in its initial days, ONDC was clocking about 25,000 orders during its peak but as offers were tightened, order volumes fell to about 19,000 earlier this week, as reported by Moneycontrol earlier.

The app offers products across six major categories, including grocery, food, pharma, electronics, home decor, and fashion. While the app is currently available only in Bengaluru, it plans to expand to other cities in the coming weeks but will not begin operations in more than 10 cities during its 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 are thrilled to witness the rapid growth and acceptance of the Pincode app among consumers," said Lalit Singh, general manager at Pincode. “Pincode remains committed to enhancing the shopping experience for its users by consistently expanding its selection of stores and adding more categories within the app,’’ Singh added.

Walmart-owned PhonePe launched Pincode, a separate app for its integration with the open network and weeks later, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said he would tell ONDC CEO T Koshy to exclude apps which are not coming to the network with their main platforms, likely hinting at Pincode and/or Axis Bank, both of which rolled out dedicated apps for the ONDC.

“If you do that (launch a separate app for ONDC), 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," the minister added.

That was especially important as the government, with the ONDC, aims 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 network and reaching a gross merchandise value of $48 billion.