We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 11 cities confirmed, 188 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city
Sell on marketplaces & offline

Is ONDC actually working for D2C brands, or is it still early and broken?

Mixed, grocery and F&B retailers with simple SKUs have reported real margin gains (15-25% higher take-home in some documented cases) by cutting out marketplace commission, but D2C brands with more complex catalogues report clunky onboarding, low current buyer-side volume, and pricing that's still opaque compared to established marketplaces. Treat ONDC in 2026 as an experiment worth running in parallel with your existing channels, not a channel to bet your growth plan on yet. The upside case is real (network effects compounding as more buyer apps join) but unproven at D2C-brand scale.

Go deeper

3 resources, 3 India-specific, 3 link-checked.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Advanced

The honest counter-view every founder should read before betting on ONDC, awareness gaps, scalability friction, opaque pricing, and real founder quotes about needing outside help to onboard.

ONDC's Reality Check

From Inc42 by Inc42

  • Small grocery retailers report 15-25% take-home margin gains via ONDC in documented cases
  • D2C brands with more complex catalogues report clunkier onboarding than simple-SKU retailers
  • Pricing transparency remains a genuine, unresolved weak point of the network
Open inc42.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

A deeper strategic explainer on why ONDC exists and what it's trying to disrupt, useful context for understanding the network's ambitions versus its current reality.

How India's Ambitious ONDC Project Can Reinvent Indian Ecommerce

From Inc42 by Inc42

  • Frames ONDC as a response to marketplace commission and discovery concentration
  • Explains the interoperability model between competing buyer/seller apps
  • Good background before reading more critical 'reality check' coverage
Open inc42.com →
🛠️ Tool
✓ Link checked India Free Beginner

The official ONDC page for sellers - the source of truth on how to actually onboard, which buyer/seller apps are live, and what the network currently supports, rather than a third-party summary.

Sellers on the ONDC Network

From ondc.org by ONDC

  • Official onboarding path and requirements for listing as a seller on ONDC.
  • Lists the network of buyer and seller apps currently integrated.
  • Network already spans 370,000+ sellers across 800+ cities as of recent counts.
Open ondc.org →

Terms in this answer

Network Effects Marketplace

People also ask

What is ONDC, and why should a D2C brand actually care? 3 → How do I actually get my brand onto ONDC, which seller app do I pick? 4 → What's the difference between an Inventory Seller Node and a Marketplace Seller Node on ONDC? 3 → What are the real costs and margins on ONDC compared to Amazon and Flipkart? 3 → Which ONDC seller apps should I actually compare before picking one? 4 → What is ONDC and should my brand list on it? 3 →
eChai Partner Brands