Venture capital firm Antler in India on Thursday announced the launch of the country's first open network for digital commerce (ONDC)-focused venture platform to support pre-team and pre-idea founders with a curated community.

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The platform, launched in partnership with Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Infosys; T Koshy, CEO of ONDC; Dr Pramod Varma, Chief Architect of Aadhaar and India Stack; and Co-Founder, FIDE; and Sujith Nair, Co-founder, FIDE), will provide resources, an expert network, community and capital for founders building on ONDC.

This is touted as the first and only venture ecosystem focused on ONDC for founders in the country, said Antler in India, one of the country's leading early-stage investment platforms.

"Only 6 per cent of MSMEs are active sellers on digital platforms. With ONDC, we believe this has the potential to grow to 30-40 per cent over the next decade,” said Nitin Sharma, Partner at Antler in India.

“We are excited to see founders building at population scale in themes like complex commerce, vernacular commerce and flow-based lending, to name a few. The
Antler ONDC platform will provide everything from the best resources to a vibrant community and seed capital for them,” he added.

The ONDC has shown promising initial traction, clocking over 1 lakh daily transactions across use cases like grocery and mobility, while enabling new business models to flourish within these sectors.

"We are going to democratise e-commerce in India. It won't be limited to a few players. Everyone, every supplier including kirana stores, grocery retailers, electronics retailers, small vendors, and restaurants should participate in the digital marketplace on an open platform,” said Nilekani.

On the ONDC platform, the ride-hailing app Namma Yatri has organically enabled over 67 lakh auto rides and on-boarded over 16 lakh users and 85 thousand auto drivers with zero marketing spend.