Hyderabad, Aug 9 (KNN) Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) have partnered to democratise and accelerate the participation of MSMEs in e-commerce.

The country's e-commerce ecosystem and principal financial institution for MSME signed a MoU on Tuesday with an aim to change the landscape of MSMEs by bringing them into the ONDC network, as per the press release.

The association between ONDC and SIDBI will establish a programmatic approach for MSMEs where sessions will be held first to educate them about ONDC.

After the introductory session,  masterclass sessions on ONDC protocol and MVP definition will be held, followed by incentivised accelerator programs and finishing with participants and their ecosystems going live and being able to transact.

The MoU was signed by Sivasubramanian Ramann, CMD, SIDBI and T Koshy, MD&CEO, ONDC.

Commenting on the partnership Koshy said, “We are building a network of networks and through this MoU, we will connect the SIDBI network with ONDC, which will revolutionize the ecosystem of small industries.”

This initiative will be a driving force to initiate the participation of the small industries across the country onto e-commerce on a larger scale and enable their growth, said Koshy.

Speaking on the occasion Ramann said, “SIDBI is very keen to ensure success of this important national initiative and it will leverage its strong relationships with all major MSME industrial clusters in the country starting with Morbi, Coimbatore and Ludhiana for engagement with ONDC.”

SIDBI will also facilitate the engagement of ONDC with its network of partner grassroots agencies, inter-alia, working for market access to informal enterprises.

Three partners being introduced to ONDC are Annapurna Finance Pvt. Ltd, Access Livelihoods Group and the women co-operative ‘Looms of Ladakh’. SIDBI will also use its strong presence in fintech ecosystem to explore e-commerce embedded financing solutions. (KNN Bureau)