When the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was conceived, its proposition was to create open digital infrastructure that could allow buyers and sellers to transact without being locked into a single marketplace. Unlike Amazon or Flipkart, ONDC is not a consumer-facing shopping platform. It connects buyer apps, seller apps, logistics providers, and other participants through common network infrastructure.
The network has built considerable scale. ONDC crossed 250 million cumulative transactions in June 2025, while its current network lists more than 75,000 merchants across categories including electronics, beauty, grocery and health and wellness. It also says channel commissions for participating merchants are, on average, 5-10% lower. But scale is only one part of the story. For brands and retailers, the more consequential question is whether ONDC can generate incremental demand, repeat customers and healthier unit economics. That distinction matters because a large transaction count does not automatically mean that the network is becoming a meaningful retail alternative.
Akshay Dsouza, Independent Consumer Consultant, points to a clear difference between mobility and non-mobility commerce. According to him, ONDC has seen strong movement in mobility, driven by buyer apps such as Namma Yatri and Paytm, while non-mobility categories have struggled to generate consistent purchasing beyond initial transactions. The challenge is particularly visible in grocery and fashion. Dsouza says, "Current non-mobility buyers tend to be deal-seekers, with food delivery accounting for a significant part of usage, while ONDC has yet to become a serious repeat-purchase engine in grocery or fashion."
The discovery problem
Part of the difficulty lies in how an open network works. A seller may onboard ONDC relatively easily, but getting consistently discovered across buyer apps is harder. Each buyer app has its own ranking and discovery mechanisms, meaning products may not consistently appear across different interfaces. For small sellers, this is compounded by catalogue standardisation and inventory synchronisation challenges. The architecture is designed to give sellers multiple routes to consumers. ONDC describes its DigiCatalog as a common catalogue infrastructure that allows businesses to create a product catalogue once and make it available across multiple commerce destinations. Its network infrastructure is also designed to allow participants to connect with multiple buyers, sellers and service providers without building separate integrations with each one.
But the infrastructure does not automatically solve consumer behaviour. As Revenue Marketing Strategist Kshitij A. Kulkarni puts it, "Consumers already have established habits around platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato and Swiggy, where reliability, fulfilment, discounts and redressal are familiar parts of the proposition. For ONDC to change behaviour, consumers need a reason they can immediately recognise, whether that is better pricing on everyday local products or access to a trusted local seller." He points to the lack of portability of ratings and reputation across buyer apps. A seller with a strong track record on one app may effectively have to establish credibility again elsewhere.
Retail is a tougher test than mobility
This is where the composition of ONDC's transactions becomes important. Kulkarni says the network processed 218 million transactions in FY26, but retail's share of transactions fell from 47% to 29%, while mobility accounted for 56% of volume. His argument is that mobility is structurally easier to scale because a ride does not involve inventory, returns or refunds in the same way as physical retail.
That distinction changes how ONDC's headline numbers are interpreted. A transaction is not necessarily equivalent across categories. A mobility booking and a grocery order place very different demands on inventory, fulfilment, customer support and repeat behaviour. For retail, therefore, the question is less about how many transactions the network can process and more about whether it can consistently deliver the experience consumers expect.
ONDC itself is building towards this problem. Its current infrastructure includes DigiCatalog, a gateway connecting participants, a registry for verified network participants and a discovery and search layer. It is also developing portable, verifiable credentials designed to make seller identity, licences, registrations and reputation more visible across the network.
Where the opportunity could be bigger
The strongest case for ONDC may not necessarily be consumer acquisition. Kulkarni points to DigiDukaan as an example of where the open-network model can address a more fundamental distribution problem. ONDC says DigiDukaan has digitised more than 12,000 kiranas, with more than 400 brands available through the procurement platform, and is live in Hyderabad and Jaipur. The model is designed around the way general trade already operates, bringing retailers, distributors and brands into a digital procurement layer rather than forcing existing relationships to disappear. ONDC says the system is intended to enable faster replenishment, improve visibility and reduce working-capital lock-up for retailers.
This creates a different proposition from consumer marketplaces. Instead of trying to persuade a shopper to change where they buy, an open network can potentially make it easier for a retailer to access brands, manage inventory and replenish stock. For brands, that could make ONDC more relevant as distribution infrastructure than as a standalone customer-acquisition platform.
The economics need to go beyond commissions
Lower platform fees are an important part of the proposition, but they do not automatically translate into better economics. For sellers, the final equation includes discounts, logistics, transaction costs, customer acquisition and fulfilment. ONDC currently highlights 5-10% lower average channel commissions for its retail merchants, but the real value for a business ultimately depends on what happens to the customer after the first transaction.
This is particularly relevant for service businesses. Nilesh Kothari, Founder of Billu Salon, argues that merchant participation and order volumes alone are insufficient measures of success for salons. "Instead, businesses should look at new customers acquired, completed appointments, conversion, average order value, repeat bookings, retention and overall customer value. For salons, ONDC can provide another discovery and booking route, particularly for businesses seeking customers beyond their immediate catchment." But Kothari notes that a lower platform cost does not automatically make a single booking more profitable. Customer acquisition costs, transaction costs and, most importantly, repeat bookings determine the longer-term economics. That principle extends beyond services.
From transaction volume to customer value
Vibhor Gulati, Founder of Defodio Digital, argues that ONDC should not be viewed as a one-to-one replacement for Amazon or Flipkart. Instead, he sees it as another layer of digital commerce infrastructure that could give brands more routes to market and reduce dependence on a few large platforms. "The missing piece is measurement. A brand selling through multiple buyer apps may see fragmented views of its customers. Without standardised order-level information flowing back to sellers, measuring repeat purchases, attribution and customer lifetime value becomes difficult. Kulkarni argues that this lack of measurement can ultimately constrain the amount of marketing investment brands are willing to put behind the channel."
That makes the next phase of ONDC less about proving that an open network can generate transactions and more about proving that those transactions create durable business value. The network has already established that open commerce can operate at scale. Its next test is whether sellers can reliably be discovered, fulfil orders, understand their customers and bring those customers back. For ONDC, the distinction is crucial. Being another digital channel is one achievement. Becoming a channel that consistently delivers incremental demand, measurable customer value and sustainable seller economics is a much bigger one.
