Over 7,000 Farm Organizations Join ONDC’s E-Commerce Platform – Industry News

With over 7,000 agri-cooperatives on board the government’s e-commerce platform Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the agriculture ministry has begun training them in packaging, branding, marketing, bank credit linkages, digital payments and regulatory compliance.

Officials said ONDC, which is being promoted as an alternative to global e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Walmart, has begun providing specialized training on various aspects of business development and marketing through workshops or meetings organized by the Ministry of Agriculture that will be held across the country over the next year.

“We plan to organise two mega events every month in cities where several of these farmer collectives will participate, where training will be organised in collaboration with private sectors, including banks and the major packaging sector DCGpac,” said an FE official. Currently, 55 FPOs are participating in the farmer producer organisation (FPO) melas that are organised here and such events will be organised across the country.

Since April 2023, when FPOs started joining the ONDC platform, over 7,638 such entities (out of 8,800 entities registered with the government so far) have sold as many as 3,100 varieties of value-added agricultural products through the platform.

“Since our association with ONDC, we have crossed Rs 4 crore sales this fiscal and our target is to increase sales to Rs 7 crore by fiscal 2025,” said Tapas Kumar Pati, COO, BASIX Krishi Samruddhi, a group that has supported 80 FPOs in ONDC across Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

To provide farmers with better market conditions access, an agriculture ministry official said, “The move to induct FPOs into ONDC is aimed at giving them direct access to digital marketingonline payments, business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions.”

The network includes over 30 digital apps including Mystore, PayTM, Magicpin and Delhiveryincluding intercity logisticsand platforms for buyers and sellers. In April 2022, the government launched ONDC as a Section 8 company set up by the department to promote the industry and internal trade.

While ONDC is working with the Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), an entity under the agriculture ministry, to support FPOs, officials say the aim is to support small and micro enterprises as FPOs face challenges in accessing markets across the country.

Over 8,800 FPOs have been registered against the government’s target of setting up 10,000 such organisations under a new central sector scheme titled ‘Creation and Promotion of 10,000 FPOs’ launched in 2020 with a budget of Rs 6,865 crore.

Under the FPO scheme, they receive financial assistance of up to Rs 1.8 million per FPO for a period of three years. In addition, there is provision for matching capital grants of up to Rs 2,000 per farmer who is a member of the FPO, with a limit of Rs 1.5 million per FPO.

The scheme also includes a credit guarantee of up to Rs 20 million of project loan per FPO.