ONDC join forces with NABARD to bring e-commerce to Agritech

New Delhi, June 20 (KNN) The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is collaborating with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to organise a Grand Hackathon from July 1-3.

The event aims to connect agritech players with market-ready Farmers Producers Organisations (FPOs) and to bring e-commerce to agriculture domain.

The hackathon will witness 400 participants, out of which 250 are agritech startups and rest are non-agritech ventures.

Speaking about the event, the ONDC’s CEO T Koshy told ET “this was the first initiative to introduce FPOs to technology. NABARD and ONDC will be planning more Grand Challenges across multiple states in partnership with state governments and the Ministry of MSME.”

“NABARD is one of the earlier investors in ONDC. We decided to adopt a programmatic approach to encourage rural tech innovations and give them an opportunity to experiment in ONDC”, he added.

In April, the government kicked off a pilot for ONDC in five cities – Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong and Coimbatore.

In all, there are around 24 Indian startups looking to join ONDC in one capacity or other, along with established companies such as Paytm Mall and tech giants such as Google. (KNN Bureau)