India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has passed 500 million cumulative transactions, marking a major milestone for the country’s attempt to build an open and interoperable alternative to traditional e-commerce platforms.

The milestone was reached in July 2026, according to figures provided by India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). ONDC has grown rapidly from around 200,000 transactions in the 2022–23 financial year to 218 million transactions during FY2025–26.

Unlike Amazon, Flipkart or other conventional marketplaces, however, ONDC is not itself an e-commerce platform. It provides the infrastructure through which different buyer applications, sellers, logistics providers and other services can interact.

That distinction is becoming increasingly important as ONDC expands beyond retail commerce into transport, logistics and other digital services.

What is ONDC?

ONDC was launched in 2022 as part of India's wider digital infrastructure strategy.

Rather than requiring consumers and sellers to operate within the same marketplace, ONDC is designed around interoperability.

A customer using one ONDC-connected shopping application can, in principle, discover and purchase products offered through a seller connected via another network participant.

The concept resembles the approach used by open digital infrastructure elsewhere in India, particularly the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), where banks and payment applications can interact using common standards.

India's government describes ONDC as an open network rather than an application, platform or marketplace. Its objective is to reduce dependence on individual digital platforms while making online commerce more accessible to smaller businesses.

More than 200,000 retail merchants are active on ONDC

By July 2026, more than 200,000 retail merchants were active on ONDC, while over one million service providers across mobility and logistics were associated with the network.

Earlier government figures showed ONDC reaching more than 200 million potential buyers, around 500,000 sellers and approximately 1,000 Indian cities by June 2026.

At that point, the network was handling close to nine million transactions per month.

The figures illustrate how rapidly ONDC has evolved from an experimental digital commerce initiative into a significant part of India's broader digital economy.

For smaller retailers in particular, the model is intended to provide online visibility without requiring them to become dependent on a single marketplace ecosystem.

India has also launched initiatives designed specifically to accelerate that process.

The DigiDukaan programme, for example, has reportedly onboarded more than 13,000 small kirana stores in Hyderabad and Jaipur, providing support to help traditional retailers participate in digital commerce.

ONDC is becoming more than an e-commerce network

One of the most important developments behind the 500 million transaction milestone is ONDC's expansion beyond conventional retail.

More than one million drivers are now participating in ride-hailing services connected to the network.

ONDC has also entered public transport. As of June 2026, it was facilitating more than 370,000 public transport journeys per day through more than 35 buyer applications.

The network covers nine metro systems and four urban bus transport operators, while approximately 80% of India's metro ticketing inventory is now available through ONDC.

This expansion demonstrates the broader ambition behind ONDC.

Instead of creating another online marketplace, India is attempting to establish a common digital commerce layer that can potentially support retail products, mobility, logistics, financial services and other transactions.

Logistics becomes increasingly important

Logistics is also developing into a significant part of the ONDC ecosystem.

More than 50 hyperlocal logistics providers are currently live on the network, while over 60,000 merchants are using ONDC Logistics.

More than 50 brands operating in areas including food delivery, quick commerce, pharmacy and general retail are also reportedly using the network for deliveries across more than 150 cities.

India Post has additionally been integrated as a logistics provider.

This could prove particularly important for smaller merchants located outside India's largest urban areas, where access to established fulfilment networks can be more limited.

A commerce network can only become genuinely open if sellers also have access to competitive payment and delivery services. Expanding the number of logistics providers available through ONDC therefore represents an important part of its development.

Small businesses remain at the centre of the strategy

Supporting small and medium-sized enterprises remains one of the government's main arguments for ONDC.

Large marketplaces typically combine customer acquisition, technology, fulfilment, advertising and payments within the same ecosystem.

That can provide enormous reach, but it can also make merchants highly dependent on the rules and fees of an individual platform.

ONDC attempts to separate these functions.

Sellers can theoretically connect with multiple buyer applications, while logistics providers, payment services and other companies can compete to provide different elements of the transaction.

India has approved ₹2.77 billion under the MSME TEAM initiative for FY2024–25 to FY2026–27 to help micro and small enterprises participate in digital commerce.

The programme provides assistance with onboarding, product cataloguing, account management, logistics and packaging, with 50% of the targeted beneficiary businesses expected to be women-owned enterprises.

Agriculture is also moving onto the network

ONDC's expansion is extending into agricultural commerce.

Through the Amazing India initiative, more than 800 independent sellers and eight aggregator organisations representing more than 1,500 Farmer Producer Organisations have joined the network.

Seven warehouses have also been established in cooperation with India Post and DGCPack.

The development points towards another potential use for open commerce infrastructure: connecting smaller producers directly with digital buyers without requiring them to build their own e-commerce operations.

Could ONDC become India's UPI for commerce?

The most ambitious comparison surrounding ONDC is inevitably UPI.

India's Unified Payments Interface transformed digital payments by allowing financial institutions and payment applications to communicate through common infrastructure.

UPI processed more than 24,000 crore transactions during FY2025–26 and has become one of the central components of India's digital economy.

ONDC is attempting something similar for commerce, although the challenge is considerably more complicated.

A payment transaction primarily requires the movement of money and information.

E-commerce requires product discovery, inventory management, pricing, fulfilment, delivery, returns, customer support, payments and dispute resolution to work across multiple participants.

Creating interoperability across that entire chain is considerably harder.

Crossing 500 million transactions therefore does not mean ONDC has already created an alternative capable of replacing India's largest marketplaces.

It does, however, demonstrate that open-network commerce is operating at increasingly meaningful scale.

What ONDC could mean for global e-commerce

ONDC is particularly interesting outside India because it offers a fundamentally different model for organising digital commerce.

Most of the global e-commerce economy is dominated by vertically integrated platforms. Amazon, Alibaba, Mercado Libre and other major marketplaces bring buyers and sellers together inside proprietary ecosystems.

ONDC proposes that commerce itself could instead become interoperable.

If the model continues to scale, buyers, merchants, fulfilment providers and technology companies may not necessarily need to belong to the same platform to transact with one another.

ONDC has already tested an international use case involving a Singapore buyer sourcing tea directly from India through an ONDC-enabled buyer network participant, suggesting that cross-border commerce could eventually become part of the network's expansion.

That development will be particularly important to watch.

India is one of the world's largest and fastest-developing digital commerce markets. If ONDC succeeds at scale, its biggest impact may eventually extend beyond the number of transactions taking place inside India.

It could provide the global e-commerce industry with a real-world test of whether open, interoperable commerce infrastructure can coexist with — or eventually challenge — the closed marketplace model that has dominated online retail for more than two decades.

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