Tomatoes continue to fly off ONDC platform; over 45,000 kg sold in a month

Tomatoes

One month since the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) began the sale of tomatoes at discounted prices, the platform has sold over 45,000 kilograms of tomatoes. On July 21, the platform started selling tomatoes in the face of soaring prices.

As per ONDC Chief T Koshy, the platform makes tomatoes available every day at 9 am, and in a matter of minutes, they are sold out.

Initially, when we started the sales, we sold 2,000 kg per day, as per the limit allotted to us by the National Cooperative Consumer Federation (NCCF), and our stocks lasted a few hours. However, within a week, we started seeing enhanced sales, with tomatoes flying off our shelves within minutes of being made available," he told Moneycontrol.

The platform, however, has taken steps to make sure it is not the wholesalers who earn profits from this exercise.

"We have ensured that a person with one identification (ID) is able to buy a maximum of two kg only. Some people may be buying from different IDs of their families, but such cases will be limited, and no one will be able to buy the commodity in bulk," he said.

Till date, ONDC has facilitated the delivery of approximately 22,500 orders for 45,000 kg of tomatoes around Delhi-NCR.

NCCF and NAFED began retail sales of tomatoes in Delhi-NCR on July 14, when prices of the commodity saw an unprecedented rise, crossing Rs 250 per kg in several markets of the country.

Till date, over 15 lakh kg of tomatoes have been procured by the two agencies and are being continuously sold to retail consumers in major consumption centres in the country. These locations include Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan (Jaipur, Kota), Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Prayagraj), and Bihar (Patna, Muzaffarpur, Arrah, Buxar).

ONDC and NCCF joined hands to make the same prices available online. However, per Koshy, it is yet undecided how long the sale of tomatoes on ONDC will last. "This depends on how long NCCF wants to continue the programme, which of course is a decision by the government. We're simply enabling digital discovery," he said.

The retail prices of tomatoes by NCCF and NAFED was initially fixed at Rs 90 per kg which had been successively reduced in line with the decline in prices to Rs 50 per kg was on August 15 and further to Rs 40 per kg August 20 onwards.