The Government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has partnered with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to bring e-commerce to agriculture.
As a first initiative to advance ONDC competencies in the domain, ONDC and NABARD have come together to host the NABARD-ONDC Grand Challenge. The objective of which is to establish market linkages for competent players with market-ready Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOS) in the country.
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Through this partnership, It also aims to promote the development of innovative solutions that can aid the adoption of e-commerce in the agriculture sector.
T Koshy, CEO, ONDC said that for the NABARD-ONDC Hackathon, they have more than 400 entities registered, out of which around 250 are agri-tech startups while 150 are non-agri tech startups. Agro-technical entities include Ninjakart, Agmart, John Deere, Arun Dairy Farms and enterprising Kisan Agro Producer Company Limited etc according to The Economic Times.
The non-agri tech companies include Phygital24, SiS Tech, Neartail, Find.ai, Tata Cummins, ThoughtWorks, Zoho, Sonata Software, Bosch Global Software, Alpha IoT,Centrix and etc.
Koshy said startups will be given two problem statements: one, integrating existing agri-tech e-commerce players on the ONDC network, and second, creating innovative solutions that can accelerate the adoption of the enabled network.
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“NABARD is one of the earlier investors in ONDC. We decided to adopt a programmatic approach to encourage rural tech innovations, and give them an opportunity to experiment in ONDC. With interesting problem statements, they can test their solutions and will be provided with some hand-holding in terms of finance. This is to help products of diverse sellers/artisans be available in the market,” Koshy added.
Similar NABARD-ONDC Grand challenges will also be planned in collaboration with various State Governments and Ministry of MSME.
“This is the first-such initiative to introduce FPOS to the tech world. All the challenges presented will be some essential building blocks of transactions. Participants can build businesses and monetise their solutions. The winner of the hackathon can also make it available to associations or other businesses,” he added.
“If a participant has already built a platform to make their products more visible, he/she can make it ONDC compliant or make it a building block. For example, Indic language support to create catalogues for handicrafts and goods. They can approach artisans to register with them or approach handicraft associations,” Koshy explained.
