Delhi, 4th June 2024: The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) continued its strong growth momentum in May 2024, recording an all-time high of 8.9 million transactions across retail and ride-hailing segments. This represented a robust 23% month-on-month increase in total transaction volume.
In the retail segment, the Network hit a new peak of 5 million orders in May, up from 3.59 million in April. The Open Network also saw a single-day record of 200,000 retail transactions during the month. The grocery and food delivery categories each crossed the 1 million order mark for the first time, while home and kitchen had 630,000 orders, fashion had 330,000 orders, and other retail sub-categories added up to 2 million orders.
Categories like grocery, fashion, home, and kitchen have seen rising shares, indicating diversification of ONDC’s retail business. With the increase in the contribution by other categories, the food segment accounted for around 20% of total retail orders in May compared to 76% a year ago, when Food was the only category.
The ride-hailing segment witnessed slower growth, increasing from 3.6 million trips in April to 3.8 million in May, still lower than its March peak of 4 million trips.
Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra remained the top three states in terms of Network orders. Uttar Pradesh saw order numbers nearly double, while Bihar reported 42% growth.
The Network now has around 535,000 sellers across over 1,200 cities, with 84% being small sellers contributing 56% of total orders, aligning with the ONDC’s goal of benefiting small businesses.
Multiple major companies like Paytm, Ola, PhonePe, and Shiprocket have joined the ONDC Network over the past 18 months. The government aims to increase India’s e-commerce penetration to 25% with ONDC Network, targeting a gross merchandise value of $48 billion in the next couple of years.