The platform now supports commerce, mobility, delivery and public services.
The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has crossed 500 million cumulative transactions, with the government saying the network has expanded beyond retail into mobility, public transport, tourism and financial services.
According to a written reply by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in the Rajya Sabha on August 7, ONDC scaled up from 0.2 million transactions in FY23 to 218 million transactions in FY26 before crossing the 500 million cumulative transaction milestone in July 2026.
The government said more than 2 lakh retail merchants are active on the network, while over 10 lakh service providers across mobility and logistics are associated with ONDC as of July 2026.
However, it clarified that ONDC does not maintain a network-wide, seller-level count identifying businesses specifically as MSMEs or small retailers.
The government said ONDC has enabled the participation of more than 10 lakh drivers in ride-hailing services, while nearly 80 percent of India's metro ticketing inventory is available on the network.
As of June 2026, ONDC facilitated more than 3.7 lakh public transport trips daily across over 35 buyer applications, covering nine metro systems and four city bus transport entities.
In retail, the government's DigiDukaan initiative has onboarded more than 13,000 kirana stores across Hyderabad and Jaipur, with field support to help small retailers adopt digital commerce.
The network has also expanded into agriculture. Under the Amazing India initiative, more than 800 independent sellers and eight aggregator entities representing over 1,500 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been onboarded. Seven warehouses have also been operationalised in partnership with India Post and DGCPack.
In logistics, more than 50 hyperlocal logistics service providers are live on the ONDC network, with over 60,000 merchants using ONDC Logistics. More than 50 brands across online food delivery, quick commerce, pharmacy and other retail categories are leveraging the network for deliveries across more than 150 cities.
To increase the participation of micro and small enterprises, the government said an outlay of Rs 277.35 crore has been approved under the MSME TEAM Initiative, a sub-component of the World Bank-supported RAMP programme of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, for the period FY25 to FY27.
The initiative supports MSMEs through onboarding, product cataloguing, account management, logistics and packaging assistance, with 50 percent of beneficiary enterprises targeted to be women-owned businesses.
The government reiterated that ONDC is an open, interoperable digital network rather than a marketplace or platform. It operates as a Section 8 not-for-profit company under the Companies Act, 2013, enabling buyers and sellers using different applications to transact through a common network.
ONDC was launched in 2022 with the aim of curbing the influence of Amazon and Flipkart, whose dominance in India’s online retail market has raised concerns among small traders and millions of local stores that form the backbone of the country’s retail sector.
Source: Moneycontrol
