Comments
Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a Government of India initiative that aims to build an open network for buyers and sellers to democratise the current e-commerce ecosystem in the country, has launched a three-day “Grand Hackathon” starting from July 1, 2022.
The event is organised in collaboration with NABARD and is divided into two categories: Agri Grant Challenge and Agri Innovation Hackathon. It will showcase the innovations to aid the adoption of e-commerce in the agricultural sector. The event is expected to see 600 participants that will work on the hackathon challenges, technical requirements, and solve them for large-scale future application.
“This is the beginning of many programs that ONDC will do with multiple entities in the coming months. We will work with SIDBI, state SMEs, to encourage SMEs to take advantage of this new paradigm. We expect startups, and participants to build smart solutions that can help farmers and farm producers to make their product catalog digitized, publish it on ONDC protocol, and to get them to track orders and payments among other things,” T.Koshy, CEO of ONDC told BusinessLine.
ONDC Protoco
Koshy added that the ONDC Protocol is ready and 150 entities are in various stages of integration with ONDC. On the plan of opening ONDC to customers, he said that currently, pilots are going on in six cities including Delhi, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Shillong, Lucknow, and Bhopal. The network is open to customers in these cities only through invitation and probably in another month ONDC will start adding more customers.
The event will also include rewards/financial incentives totalling ₹1.2 cr for its winning participants. ONDC and NABARD will have interventions to help build on the solutions developed as part of the hackathon, Further, it is also planned as phase II initiatives for rural tech.
“. No other sector has the scale and wide impact that agriculture has and it will be an important addition to our network at this early stage. India is a global agricultural powerhouse and bridging the gap between them and e-commerce will result in a plethora of opportunities for all the stakeholders,” Koshy added.
Spokesperson of NABARD said, “NABARD is excited to collaborate for this grand event to activate eCommerce in agriculture space through ONDC.”
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.