According to reports, ride-hailing Company Ola is planning to offer its customers the option to shop for groceries and fashion and apparel on Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) via its app, broadening the suite of e-commerce offerings to its 75 million monthly active users.

Food and beverages can only be ordered through the Ola app on ONDC at the moment.

According to reports, Ola has decided to use ONDC for horizontal scaling up across multiple segments and to expand their e-commerce presence on the network. There are thousands of grocers and fashion and apparel brands across cities already on the network with the ONDC integration.

The network now has more than 380,000 sellers, of which non-mobility accounts for 105,000.

Total revenue rose 58 percent to Rs 2,135 crore in FY23, while overall loss narrowed 65 percent to Rs 1,082 crore.

The new service will make the company's grocery/apparel-ordering business cost-effective as it won't have to deploy a fleet of delivery executives or convince grocers and fashion brands to sell on the Ola app. Ola is also a logistics service provider on ONDC, which may strengthen its logistics operations.

It would be difficult for Ola to put grocery, fashion, and apparel on its platform. The ONDC protocol makes it possible for the network's sellers in these categories to sell to Ola's users. Multiple sellers of goods and services can sell to customers via ONDC, as per the reports.

The mobility segment of Ola is not part of ONDC. Olas peer Uber signed an MoU with ONDC in February this year to explore integration with the network to expand the range of mobility offerings on the Uber app.

Ola is already a fully functioning platform. For mobility, they already have a buyer, a seller, and a platform. They're all available. The ONDC protocol is something they would want for food and beverages, grocery, fashion and apparel, according to reports.