India vs Pakistan: ONDC scores more than 65,000 retail orders on match day

On Saturday when 3.5 crore viewers were glued to screens on Disney Hotstar alone to watch the India Pakistan match creating a record, the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) also had a personal best of receiving 65,400 pure retail orders in a single day.

These orders came from 600 cities. Forty seven percent of these orders came from the food and beverages sector. Multiple seller apps that ET spoke with on the network who are major players in the food and beverages sector on ONDC said individually also they saw orders peak on Saturday like never before.

The cricket match, eve of Navratri, discounts, weekend, and multiple buyer apps played a role, they said. Buyer apps are customer-facing apps where consumers can place orders. In addition, another 100,000 taxi/auto rides from four cities were also undertaken in the mobility sector.

The highest number of orders came from Delhi (7,852), Bengaluru (7,586), Mumbai (3,770), Pune (3,729) and Hyderabad (3,231). At least 70 cities placed more than 100 orders on the network.The rest of the categories that contributed to the surge in orders on Saturday are fashion (25%), electronics (9%), grocery (8%), home and kitchen (7%) beauty and personal care (3%), and health and wellness (1%).

A source told ET more seller apps and buyer apps, and special offers by both, played a role in the surge. “Magicpin, uEngage, GrowthFalcons, bitsila, and EkSecond are the main food seller apps. Most buyer apps are allowing their buyers to order food too,” the source said.

Also read | ONDC logs meteoric rise; challenges are climbing fast too

Sameer Sharma, founder and chief executive of uEngage, which helps restaurants save aggregator commission, told ET, they got more than 4,000 orders on Saturday which is the highest so far on a single day on ONDC.

“We haven’t done so many orders in the past. On an average, it is 1,000 to 2,500 orders per day from ONDC on uEngage,” he said. “New buyer apps who have joined like NoBrokerHood, Ola, Paytm are pushing for more traffic on ONDC, Pincode has garnered millions of downloads now, and Magicpin’s contribution has also grown a lot,” Sharma said.

India Pakistan match has always been a hot property for consumers, this was a major factor, he said. Also, because it was a pre-Navratri day, all this collectively contributed to the surge in orders, he said.

Girish Pai, chief executive of GrowthFalcons said their experience on Saturday was very good, and that they have onboarded more than 5,000 merchants onto ONDC.

“All these restaurants are now visible on multiple buyer apps like Paytm, magicpin, Ola, Pincode, and Nobrokerhood. Ola and Nobrokerhood have also forayed into food and beverages, and you can order food there too,” Pai said.

The visibility and demand have increased. “With Navratri, World Cup matches, especially the India-Pakistan match over the weekend, played a role in the increase. We saw orders increase by four times on Saturday compared to a normal day,” he said.

Currently, the network has more than 40,000 sellers who are live in more than 200 cities. The network has grown from 1,000 transactions in January to a cumulative of more than 3.3 million in September.

ONDC is not an application, platform, intermediary, or software but a set of specifications designed to foster open, unbundled, and interoperable open networks.