The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the government-backed digital infrastructure to democratize e-commerce, is shifting its focus to logistics, mobility, and transport, while adopting a more targeted approach to retail.
The objective is now primarily to aggregate farmers’ produce and bring it online to give them wider access to buyers, as well as to bring made-in-India products, particularly through DigiHaat, to the open network. Logistics, auto bookings and ticketing are emerging as other key areas, according to three people familiar with the strategy.
ONDC’s earlier retail push focused more heavily on driving consumer orders across categories such as food and grocery, effectively positioning the network closer to established . That approach risked blurring the distinction between an open network and another consumer marketplace, said two of the three people cited above.
“Over the past four years, the fear was that ONDC was trying to become another e-commerce platform. The opportunity is to use interoperability to solve problems that individual platforms cannot solve efficiently,” the first of the three people said.
ONDC, launched in April 2022, is now focusing more on areas where interoperability can address structural gaps, including digitizing retail supply chains in fragmented areas, connecting merchants to multiple logistics providers, and enabling different mobility and transport operators and consumer apps to use common infrastructure.
The network now has “sharper conviction” about where it can create the most value, with retail, logistics and mobility emerging as key areas, ONDC said in response to Mint’s emailed queries.
The shift comes after a year of significant change at ONDC, with Vibhor Jain taking over as managing director and chief executive from T. Koshy in April and Manoj Thakur joining as chief technology officer (CTO) in February.
The network has also raised ₹430 crore from a group of strategic investors, including Zoho, Uber, Paytm, , BSE Technologies, Amul, State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank.
‘ONDC 2.0’
ONDC’s retail strategy, internally referred to as “ONDC 2.0”, is based on three key initiatives: DigiDukaan, DigiHaat, and DigiBazaar.
Its Amazing India programme now works with eight aggregators covering 1,500 farmer-producer organisations (FPOs) and more than 50,000 farmers, while DigiDukaan has expanded to 18,000-plus retailers across Hyderabad, Jaipur and Mumbai, according to data accessed by Mint.
The numbers, however, remain modest compared with the markets ONDC is targeting. India has more than 14 million kirana stores, according to the network’s own estimates, with procurement across much of the sector still largely manual.
Instead of asking local retailers to build standalone online businesses, the network aims to make their existing inventory discoverable when a nearby consumer searches for a product. Its initial focus is electronics, with orders routed through the appropriate fulfilment network.
The other major retail bet is on the supply side. ONDC says farmers, artisans and rural producers recorded an 11-fold increase in order volumes during 2025-26 through models built on the network. Its direct-to-consumer strategy similarly seeks to give Indian brands access to multiple buyer applications without relying on a single marketplace.
DigiHaat’s launch of Swadeshi, a marketplace for made-in-India products, also aligns with that direction, connecting consumers with artisans, farmer groups, self-help groups, non-governmental organizations, and Indian brands.
Food remains part of ONDC’s retail strategy, although its role is becoming more targeted. has begun accepting food orders on its network, with the service currently being tested by a closed user group, according to the two people cited above. A wider rollout is expected ahead of Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale, they said.
The same approach is being applied to logistics. ONDC has more than 30 small and micro fleet operators on FleetConnect, contributing more than 22% of network orders, while more than 80,000 merchants use ONDC logistics. The network is effectively putting a digital layer between merchants and multiple delivery providers rather than requiring individual integrations.
“Whether the new approach can produce sufficient volumes and sustainable economics for smaller operators at scale has emerged as a concern among industry executives,” according to the third of the three.
Mobility and ticketing provide a different test. In its FY26 annual report, ONDC said more than 500,000 metro and bus journeys are facilitated daily and that around 30% of online public-transport transactions flow through the network. More than 40 consumer applications carry public-transport ticketing.
Value proposition
Here, the value proposition is less about creating another destination for consumers and more about reducing the number of integrations required by transport authorities, according to the third person.
“The opportunity is in fragmented supply, by bringing together operators that individually don’t have the scale or technology to access digital demand,” the third person said.
However, inconsistent business models continue to impact ONDC’s way forward. “They have capacity but no technology, so they cannot access consistent demand or demonstrate the reliability needed to grow,” the third person added.