Quick commerce and logistics start-up Dunzo announced that its seller arm has joined the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). The Reliance Retail-backed company hopes to onboard over 20,000 merchants across verticals in the next 45 days, including across food, grocery, pharma, and other essentials.

Local merchants joining Dunzo's business-to-business (B2B) vertical will have direct access to the ONDC network. The company plans to onboard 20,000 local merchants across the food, grocery, and pharma sectors in the next 45 days.

Dunzo joined the ONDC platform in July 2023, and the company claimed that it is already witnessing high volumes. In addition to being a logistics partner on the network, the seller app will onboard 1,500 local merchants in the next week. Dunzo's do-founder Dalvir Suri said since the onboarding on the ONDC; there has been a three-time increase in the number of daily orders for merchants.

"It's been less than two weeks since we've been live on the network, and we have already hit peak order volumes of more than 3,000 a day for groceries and other essential items through our local merchants," he said. "We have merchant partners who’ve also seen a 3X increase in their daily orders. Very soon, India’s ecommerce landscape will be marked by pre-ONDC and post-ONDC days, and we are happy to be one of the first to participate in this network and drive this change."

This latest news comes against the backdrop of the quick-commerce company battling financial distress due to a severe liquidity crisis. To manage its cashflow funnel, it undertook three rounds of layoffs this year and reportedly deferred salary payouts.

Since its inception in 2015, Dunzo has raised close to $500 million from investors like Reliance, Google, Lightrock, Lightbox and Blume Ventures. Earlier this year, the company's management informed employees in a town hall that it was planning to shift its business model to put it on a path to profitability.

To continue its business operations and stave off competition, Dunzo has been in a capital raising mode for several months. According to an Economic Times report, it secured funding of $75 million through convertible notes in April 2023 from Google, Reliance Retail and other existing investors