ONDC partners with Google, Meta to reach small businesses
Mint, Thampy Koshy, managing director and chief executive of ONDC, said that the onboarding of new users is being scaled up at a rapid pace on the ONDC protocol. “In January, we announced public availability of ONDC in Bengaluru. At that time, we had just around 1,000-1,200 transactions per month.
In just about 12 months’ time, the protocol is already seeing 5 million monthly transactions in Bengaluru," Koshy said. The ONDC adoption on Google Maps, said Miriam Daniel, vice-president at Google Maps, will be scaled up in the coming months to become accessible for multiple public transport services. Koshy further said that large corporations such as Hindustan Unilever are also expressing an interest in adoption of the ONDC framework.
Such adoption is likely to receive a boost from new regulations such as the Telecom Bill, tabled in Parliament on Monday. “My focus is on enabling digital commerce, and new progressive regulations will help in supporting India’s overall digital economy," Koshy said. Availability of public mobility services on platforms has been increasing of late—Delhi Metro Rail Corp.
on 5 October opened its ticketing service through WhatsApp for all lines. On 13 August, Koshy told Mint that the platform already had over 150,000 merchants on the platform, including 90,000 from the mobility sector. Over 50,000 restaurants were also a part of it.
A key part of ONDC’s new partnerships would also be on skilling. For instance, Meta and ONDC’s partnership will include digital skilling of small businesses in order to help them migrate their businesses to digital platforms. This can further scale the onboarding of small businesses on digital platforms such as WhatsApp, Meta’s Devanathan said, stating that such a model
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