February and March have been record months for the food delivery segment on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). The network has seen the monthly food orders cross the 5 lakh-mark in March. This comes at a time when many key restaurant players have been onboarded in the past few months, with food orders through ONDC now being placed from over 200 cities.

Strong growth

Shireesh Joshi, Chief Business Officer, ONDC told businessline, “ While we continue to add new geographies and new categories, what has been heartening to note is that existing categories also continue to witness strong growth momentum. Last year, in March, we were barely doing about 4,000 food orders, and this March, we have crossed the 5 lakh orders mark. The number of restaurants available on the network has also now tripled. The Holi weekend witnessed a 10-15 per cent jump in terms of food orders over the previous weekend.”

Over the past few months, major players such as Domino’s, Rebel Foods, McDonald’s, Burger King and Biryani by Kilo among others have onboarded on ONDC either directly or through buyer apps.

‘Healthy level’

“While February was a record month, it looks like March will top that. We not only have national brands but also regional brands. So we will end this fiscal year at a healthy level and momentum,” Joshi said, adding that the food delivery orders are now coming from more than 200 cities. He pointed out this has been a result of the “network effect” as over the course of the year, food delivery ended up becoming a widely promoted category across buyer applications due to the addition of the biggest pool of sellers.

Besides mobility and food delivery, it has also seen a rise in transactions in various other categories including fashion, electronics, health and wellness products, home and kitchen products among others. Overall, ONDC is now witnessing more than two lakh transactions per day.

Responding to a query on addition of new categories in the new fiscal year, Joshi said, “ We have made good progress in the grocery segment too, which is a challenging category to crack. We now have more than 5,000 FPOs live on the network and they bring some very unique products. We are also on the cusp of introducing financial services. So we expect to see the broadening of products and services in new and existing categories and also see expansion of geographies.”

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