So Far, 7 Lakh Sellers have Joined ONDC: Piyush Goyal

Nitin Konde, Varun Bhardwaj

Jan 3, 2025 — 2 min read

7 Lakh Sellers Join ONDC: Piyush Goyal Shares Update

According to Piyush Goyal, the minister of commerce, over 7 lakh vendors and service providers have joined the open network for digital commerce (ONDC) thus far. According to Goyal's post on X, these vendors come from over 600 cities and villages spread all around the nation. He went on to say that over 15 crore transactions had been handled by the state-backed network so far. Additionally, ONDC has 200 network members. The Modi government established ONDC in 2021 with the goal of democratising e-commerce in India. In addition to hitting many milestones over the last three years, Goyal stated in a post on X that it has empowered businesses—particularly small businesses—by giving them an even playing field on the network. The minister of commerce also mentioned that in the three years after ONDC began operating, customers from 1,100 towns and cities have made purchases on the network.

PM Applauding ONDC

After Goyal's tweet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised ONDC for "revolutionising" e-commerce. According to the PM, ONDC has played a crucial role in advancing growth and prosperity by empowering small enterprises and transforming e-commerce. This comes a few weeks after ONDC CEO Thampy Koshy claimed that since December 2023, the network's transaction volume has increased by almost three times. By December 2025, he predicted, the state-backed network's transaction volume would have increased 7X-8X. According to earlier reports, the festive season sales were a major factor in ONDC's 1.4 Cr transactions in October 2024. The mobility segment accounted for 55 lakh of these transactions, while the non-mobility segments accounted for the remaining 84 lakh.

Founded in 2021, ONDC is an open protocol-based network that facilitates local business in a variety of sectors, such as grocery and transportation. Under the auspices of the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), ONDC is essentially the government's idea to create a rival to the e-commerce behemoths and provide MSMEs and small merchants with greater visibility.

Challenges Faced by ONDC

With businesses and unicorns like Zerodha, PolicyBazaar, and Physics Wallah drawn to the platform's democratising strategy, it has expanded its offerings into industries including food delivery, e-commerce, and taxi hailing. Even with this remarkable growth, ONDC still faces challenges, especially in terms of performance and awareness.

Brands like True Elements, which reported a sharp drop in revenue through the platform in 2024 when compared other marketplaces with better performance, presented one such difficulty. Even while ONDC provides an affordable means of reaching a big consumer base, a major barrier to achieving its full potential is still its low consumer visibility.