India's open network for digital commerce, explained.

Today, e-commerce mostly happens inside closed platforms: buyers and sellers can only transact if they are on the same platform, and a single company controls the whole chain from listing to delivery. That locks sellers into high margin costs and forces them to maintain a presence on multiple platforms, while monopolies raise barriers for everyone else. The result, per ONDC's own figures (site crawled 24 Jul 2026): of India's 12 million-plus sellers, only about 15,000 (0.125%) had enabled e-commerce, and e-retail penetration stood at just 4.3% (2020) versus 25% in China and 23% in the UK.

ONDC is not a shopping site. It is an open network that connects every kind of player involved in selling online: shopping apps (called buyer apps), sellers and the apps that list them, logistics partners who deliver, and technology service providers. No single company controls the end-to-end journey of a purchase.

Under the hood, ONDC is a communication protocol built on open-source specifications — a shared technical language, in the same spirit as the open protocols behind the web and email (HTTP, SMTP). Any app that speaks this protocol can talk to any other app on the network: buyer-side apps and seller-side apps interact directly, with ONDC defining the rules rather than sitting in the middle of transactions.

In practice this means any buyer app connects to any seller app. Open one buyer app and you can reach the entire spectrum of products and services on the network, not just that app's own catalogue. As of the ONDC site (crawled 24 Jul 2026), the network listed over 7.64 lakh (764,000+) sellers and service providers across 12 product categories, growing by thousands each week. A single order can be fulfilled by multiple independent companies — one app takes the order, a different platform lists the seller, a third handles delivery.

ONDC the organisation was incorporated in December 2021 as a Section 8 company, with the Quality Council of India and Protean eGov Technologies Limited as Founding Members. Around 30 institutions have invested in it, including State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Punjab National Bank, NABARD, SIDBI, BSE Technologies, NSE Investments, Zoho, Uber India and One 97 Communications. Its Managing Director & CEO is Vibhor Jain (per the ONDC site, crawled 24 Jul 2026).

One caveat from ONDC itself: the network is still maturing, so not every buyer app yet covers every product category or location. Also expect order updates from more than one company after you buy — that is normal, because multiple partners fulfil each order.