Selling on ONDC: Worth It in 2026?

Most sellers hear ONDC described as a government-backed rival to Amazon and Flipkart. That framing is wrong, and it leads brands to evaluate it with the wrong questions. ONDC is not a marketplace. It is an open protocol for commerce, closer in spirit to UPI than to a shopping app. Once you understand that, the real questions become clear: how do I get on, what does it cost, and who actually buys there.

What ONDC actually is

On a closed marketplace, one company owns the storefront, the seller panel, the search algorithm, and the checkout. ONDC breaks that apart. Buyer apps and seller apps are separate businesses that talk to each other through a common protocol. A customer shopping inside one buyer app can discover and purchase a product listed through a completely different seller app. Neither side needs a commercial agreement with the other. The network handles discovery, ordering, and post-order flows between them.

The practical consequence for a brand: you list once, through one seller-side partner, and your catalog becomes visible across every buyer app that serves your category and your delivery area. You do not build a presence app by app. The network does the distribution.

How a seller actually gets on

You cannot register with ONDC directly. Sellers join through a seller network participant, sometimes called a seller app or SNP. These are private companies that host your catalog, push it onto the network in the required format, receive orders, and manage settlements. Some are commerce enablers that also give you a website and inventory tooling. Some are focused purely on network access.

Choosing the participant is the setup decision that matters most. Evaluate on four things.

• Category fit. Some participants are strong in grocery and food, others in fashion or general merchandise. Ask which categories they actually transact in, not which they support on paper.
• Integration. If the participant can sync inventory and pricing from your existing systems, ongoing operations stay light. If everything is manual uploads, the channel will decay from neglect.
• Fee structure. Participants charge in different ways: subscription, per-order fee, or a percentage. Get the full stack in writing, including logistics.
• Support quality. When an order fails or a settlement is short, you need a human who responds. Test this before you sign, not after.

Documentation is the familiar Indian e-commerce set: GST registration, bank account, FSSAI licence if you sell food, and a catalog that meets the network’s data standards. Setup is usually days, not months.

The economics, directionally

This is where ONDC earns its attention. On a closed marketplace you pay a referral commission on every sale, plus closing fees, plus fulfilment or shipping fees, plus advertising to be seen at all. On ONDC there is no central marketplace taking that referral cut. Buyer apps and seller apps each charge smaller fees for their part of the transaction, and logistics is priced separately, often through logistics providers on the same network.

The result, in most categories, is a total take rate meaningfully below what closed marketplaces charge. We will not quote a number, because the stack varies by category, participant, and order value. Model your own basket. But the direction is consistent: more margin stays with the seller. For low-margin categories like grocery and staples, that difference can decide whether a channel is viable at all.

The trade is volume. Lower fees on fewer orders is not automatically a better business than higher fees on many orders. Which brings us to discovery.

The discovery problem

ONDC has no single storefront, which means it has no single search results page to rank on, no sponsored ads auction to win, and no category page to fight for. Demand is spread across buyer apps, each with its own audience and interface. A customer on one buyer app sees a different assortment than a customer on another, filtered by serviceability and by how each app chooses to surface listings.

For a brand used to marketplace playbooks, this is disorienting. There is no keyword ranking to optimise in the usual sense. What you can control: catalog completeness and data quality, because well-structured listings surface more reliably across apps. Pricing, because buyer apps compare. Serviceability, because you only appear where you can deliver. And your own demand generation, because a brand that sends its audience to an ONDC-served storefront through its own marketing captures the margin advantage without waiting for network discovery to mature.

Where the network has traction

By 2026 the network has moved past the experiment phase. Food and grocery contribute the highest transaction volumes, and a large share of growth is coming from tier 2 and tier 3 cities where seller participation and demand are both rising. Fashion and daily essentials see consistent activity. Mobility and services run on the same rails but are a separate conversation from product retail.

If you sell packaged food, grocery, or value-priced essentials with regional demand, the network is already relevant. If you sell considered-purchase electronics or premium beauty, the buyer-side demand for your category is thinner, and you should size expectations accordingly.

Worth the effort, or a distraction

Worth it when three things are true. Your category already transacts on the network. Your catalog and inventory can sync through a participant without manual effort. And your margin structure makes the lower take rate genuinely useful, rather than a rounding error.

A distraction when your core marketplace operation is not yet stable. If your Amazon account health is shaky or your Flipkart catalog is half-built, fix that first. ONDC rewards operational maturity, and it punishes neglect quietly, because there is no account manager calling you when your listings go stale. Brands that work with us on Consultancy usually hear the same sequencing advice: earn the right to add channels by running the existing ones cleanly.

The operator’s read

Treat ONDC as a low-cost option on the future, not a bet on the present. Get on through a participant that fits your category, keep the catalog synced, and let the channel run lean. If network demand in your category compounds, you are already positioned. If it stays slow, you have spent little. The mistake is not joining late. The mistake is joining loudly, staffing it like a marketplace, and starving the channels that pay today’s bills.