The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is hand-holding states and central government sellers like handicraft emporiums to gradually integrate with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a senior official said on Monday.
    
ONDC is an initiative of the DPIIT to create a facilitative model to help small retailers take advantage of digital commerce. It is not an application, platform, intermediary, or software but a set of specifications designed to foster open, unbundled, and interoperable open networks.
    
Joint Secretary in the DPIIT Sanjiv said that supporting MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) has been a priority for the ONDC.
    
"This will unlock value in the huge B2B (business-to-business) market by increasing access and discoverability of various businesses across the network.
    
"As we look forward to the integration of credit in the ONDC, the business can hugely benefit from the open network ecosystem by being a part of the ONDC," he said here at a function - 'B2B Unlocked'.
    
The initiative assumes significance when it comes to digital commerce, that is, end-to-end transactions, from discovery to purchase, only a handful of Indian businesses are adopting digital.
    
As per estimates, less than 2 per cent of Indian businesses use digital tools to make themselves or their products visible digitally.
    
He said that ONDC has made significant strides in the last few months as sellers and service providers on the network have increased to more than one lakh and the network participants have increased to 51.
    
"There was a significant increase in the number of orders per day in the past month and as the network continues to stabilise, there will be an increase in the transaction volume," Sanjiv said.
    
The event marked the official entry of the open network into the realm of B2B trade, enabling merchants to engage directly with other businesses in wholesale trade.
    
SignCatch and Rapidor have enabled both the B2B buyer and seller side platforms on ONDC, fostering seamless interoperability between sellers and buyers.
    
This implementation allows sellers to utilise SignCatch to receive orders from the Rapidor B2B buyer platform and vice versa.
    
Incorporated on December 31, 2021, ONDC is a Section 8 company.