The government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is working to bring ecommerce to agriculture with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
ONDC and NABARD are organising the NABARD-ONDC Grand Hackathon on 1st-3rd July 2022, with applications to be accepted till 28th June. The event aims to connect agritech players with market-ready Farmers Producers Organisations (FPOs). The hackathon will also look to promote the adoption of ecommerce in the agriculture domain.
This was the first initiative to introduce FPOs to technology. NABARD and ONDC will be planning more Grand Challenges across multiple states in partnership with state governments and the Ministry of MSME.
The Indian government has been working on ONDC since July 2021, aiming to promote open networks developed on open-sourced methodology, using open specifications and open network protocols independent of any specific platform. The platform was officially launched on December 31, 2021.
The ONDC has seen investment from many of the government’s arms, including NABARD. Apart from the government, many public and private banks have invested in the ecommerce network. Starting with the Punjab National Bank picking up a 9.5% stake in ONDC for INR 25 Cr in November 2021, the State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank acquiring a collective 31.36% stake.
In April, the government kicked off a pilot for ONDC in five cities – Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong and Coimbatore.
In all, there are around 24 Indian startups looking to join ONDC in one capacity or other, along with established companies such as Paytm Mall and tech giants such as Google.