MUMBAI:
ONDC, a first-of-its-kind initiative to democratise the country’s e-commerce ecosystem has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SIDBI, the principal financial institution set up under an Act of Parliament for promotion, financing and development of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector and for coordination of functions of institutions engaged in similar activities. The partnership is aimed to change the landscape of MSMEs by bringing them into the ONDC network and accelerating their participation in e-commerce.
The association between ONDC and SIDBI will establish a programmatic approach for MSMEs where sessions will be held first to educate them about ONDC, then masterclass sessions on ONDC protocol and MVP definition, followed by incentivised accelerator programs and finishing with participants and their ecosystems going live and being able to transact.
The MoU, signed by Sivasubramanian Ramann, CMD, SIDBI and T Koshy, MD&CEO, ONDC, provides for several collaborative efforts by SIDBI and ONDC in helping MSMEs access open network e-commerce platform proposed by ONDC.
T. Koshy, MD & CEO, ONDC, 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.”
S.Ramann, CMD, SIDBI, 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 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.”
