Govt to launch a rival to Amazon, Flipkart

NEW DELHI: The government plans to roll out its indigenously developed online e-commerce network for the public in 100 Indian cities by Diwali to provide millions of kirana stores and consumers an alternative to multinational platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart.

Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Friday announced the testlaunch of the open-source system. The beta launch will unveil the IT applications of the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and registry covering a small number of retailers and customers initially in Bengaluru on Friday, two people directly associated with the project said.

“After UPI (Unified Payment Interface), another game changing idea to democratise commerce - ONDC soft launch today to select consumers, sellers and logistics providers. Get ready for a world of choice, convenience and transparency,” the minister said in a tweet on Friday. The project is massive as it will provide a wide choice to all consumers and retailers and the formal launch will take place after successful testing of the system, said Anil Agrawal, the additional secretary in the department for promotion of industry and internal trade .

“End-to-end testing is being done to create a playbook with an aim to launch it in 100 cities in six months [by October 2022],” he said.

About 15 restaurants and grocery stores have been registered in Bangalore along with select consumers to begin the trial with actual delivery of products, ONDC chief executive officer Thampy Koshy said in Bengaluru on Friday.

“This is the field trial with real transactions. In the coming week, we will cover two big and three smaller cities,” he said.