Paytm Targets To Bring 10 Million Merchants To ONDC By 2025, Says Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Paytm founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that the fintech giant will onboard as many as 10 million of its merchants onto the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform by the end of 2025. Vijay Shekhar Sharma made this announcement during the launch of ONDC”s “Build for Bharat” initiative on Monday, December 4.

During the ONDC”s event, the Paytm founder said that 11.8 million users had already shopped on the government-backed ONDC through Paytm and added that the new merchants would further fuel demand from consumers on the network. “There are around 50 million e-commerce users in India, and over a fifth are already on ONDC,” Moneycontrol quoted Vijay Shekhar Sharma as saying. The Paytm CEO said that the ONDC platform has already become a significant player in the e-commerce sector.

ONDC, a groundbreaking technological initiative, is a network that allows sellers to voluntarily display their products and services across all participating apps and platforms. It was developed by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) as an alternative to online shopping. Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that the ONDC platform will open up the e-commerce opportunity for a lot of players as it breaks down various parts of the consumer experience, such as sellers, logistics, payments, and customer care. “All the overheads that a monolith e-commerce system requires will be ended by ONDC,” added the Paytm CEO. Notably, Paytm was the first buyer-side app to join ONDC during last year.