In a bid to raise awareness on how consumers can shop on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the network has launched an app.
The app ‘ONDC Network: How to Shop’ , available on Playstore and IOS, intends to serve as a gateway for consumers to discover and access various shopping applications, known as ‘buyer apps’. This comes at a time when the ONDC targets to enable 30-40 million monthly transactions by FY25-end.
T Koshy, MD and CEO, ONDC, told businessline, “When consumers hear about ONDC, they wonder if they can download an app to shop. There is, in this early stage of the establishment of the network, a lack of awareness about how to shop leveraging the network because the consumers are used to downloading apps or going to a site for shopping. That has been a challenge. So, we decided to launch an app that helps the consumer discover various buyer applications in the network and choose convenient apps to make their purchases.”
Since launch, the network has been attempting to explain to stakeholders that ONDC is not an application platform, intermediary or software but a set of applications designed to foster unbundled and interoperable open networks. Now, it hopes to bridge the awareness gap with this app.
Categorisation
“ONDC Network has multiple shopping applications to help shoppers buy the products and services of their choice. Different shopping applications have enabled different categories. This app helps consumers to identify which shopping applications have enabled the category they are interested in,” says the app’s homepage.
The app lists various categories of products and services available on the network, such as food and beverages, grocery, fashion, home and kitchen products, travel tickets, loans, investments, and insurance, among others. Once consumers click on the category of product or service of choice, the app lists the shopping applications and their respective links, which redirects to the respective buyer apps.
In August, ONDC enabled about 12.6 million transactions. Koshy said the network has seen a rise in transactions beyond mobility and restaurant ordering segments. He said categories such as grocery, fashion, beauty, personal care and home decor, among others, have been gaining traction on the network.
Multilingual reach
Meanwhile, ONDC on Wednesday also announced that it has partnered with Bhashini to launch Saarthi, a multilingual reference B2B app that can assist businesses in creating a customised buyer-side apps and overcome language barriers in digital commerce. “Developed together with Bhashini — an AI-driven language translation tool, Saarthi provides a framework to network participants that enables seamless integration with ONDC, offering advanced multilingual capabilities for a more inclusive digital commerce experience,” it said. The application initially supports Hindi, English, Marathi, Bangla and Tamil, with plans to scale up to all the 22 languages provided by Bhashini.
“The multilingual features of Saarthi, including real-time translation, transliteration, and voice recognition allow businesses to expand market reach, enabling companies to tap into new regions and increase customer acquisition,” it added.