ONDC to launch insurance products and investment funds in two months

The chain also plans to introduce a credit card offer in cooperation with Mastercard, but the launch date has not yet been announced.

ONDC CEO T Koshy said the mutual fund offering will be launched next month

ONDC also announced partnerships with nine lending providers to offer digital loans to users within six minutes

The Open Digital Commerce Network (ONDC) plans to launch insurance and mutual fund products in the next two months.

According to the Economic Times, the chain is also planning to launch credit cards in partnership with Mastercard, but no date has been given for their launch.

“We have launched Marine app, one insurer and two more are coming… As far as health insurance is concerned, we are live but the partner is not licensed. Motor (insurance) should be launched in the next month or so. And MF will be launched next month. We want to achieve 100-200 transactions first,” T Koshy, CEO of ONDC, reportedly said.

Mentioning the credit card offering, ONDC senior vice president of financial services Hrushikesh Mehta said Mastercard had volunteered to work out protocols for implementing credit cards on the network.

“We have a community volunteer program, if a company wants to help build the protocol, we are in the driver’s seat and we understand that we will make it publicly available… I just partnered with Mastercard, who is now willing to volunteer and build protocols for credit card implementation,” Mehta added.

The news comes on a day when the network announced partnerships with companies like Easypay, Paisabazaar, Tata Digital, Invoicepe, Cliniq360, Zyapaar, Indipe, Tyreplex and Paynearby to enable users to avail digital loans within six minutes.

The entry into the insurance market comes almost a year after Inc42 reported that the chain was considering launching a range of financial services, including personal and SME loans, insurance (auto, health and marine), as well as mutual funds.

Last month, ONDC Chief Business Officer (CBO) Shireesh Joshi told Inc42 that the chain has planned a sequence of steps to launch the credit offering.

“Now that we have completed the testing phase, we are inviting more credit providers and interested providers to say the network is ready, join us and start doing business. Right now, we have a target base number that we are aiming to achieve before we make the service available to the general public,” he said at the time.

The expansion comes as ONDC rapidly scales up operations. The network surpassed 12 million monthly e-commerce transactions in July, with 4.4 million of those coming from the mobility domain.

ONDC claims to be operational in over 611 cities across India and has 111 participants in the network.