Search "how to sell on ONDC" and you will find dozens of seller apps promising instant onboarding, but very little that explains the network you are actually joining or the economics you are signing up for. This playbook is for D2C founders and SMB owners who want the practical version: what the Open Network for Digital Commerce is, how you get on it through a Seller Network Participant, what going live really involves, and how the numbers compare with Amazon and Flipkart. ONDC is now a real channel: more than 1.16 lakh retail sellers were live across over 630 cities and towns as of December 2025, according to a government statement in the Lok Sabha, but it rewards founders who understand the model before they list.
What ONDC actually is, and what it is not
ONDC is not an app, a marketplace, or a company that holds your inventory. It is an open, interoperable network built on the Beckn protocol, an initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) that is incorporated as a not-for-profit Section 8 company. Its core idea is unbundling: the traditional e-commerce stack, where one platform owns discovery, cataloguing, orders, payments, and delivery, is broken into separate roles that any participant can play.
On the demand side, buyer apps such as Paytm and Magicpin handle discovery. On the supply side, seller apps, formally called Seller Network Participants, connect merchants and their catalogues to the network. Gateways broadcast search requests across the network, and independent logistics providers bid to fulfil delivery. Because these roles are interoperable, a single product you list can be discovered and sold across many buyer apps at once, instead of being locked into one storefront. That portability is the entire pitch.
How to sell on ONDC: the Seller Network Participant model
You almost never plug into ONDC directly as a merchant. You go live through a Seller Network Participant (SNP), the seller app that digitises your catalogue, receives orders, disburses payments to you, and trains you on the network. ONDC broadly distinguishes two kinds of seller node:
- Inventory Seller Node (ISN): for businesses that produce, manufacture, or sell their own inventory of products or services. Inventory-led sellers can register on the ONDC Participant Portal and integrate with the network.
- Marketplace Seller Node (MSN): for sellers who reach the network through a marketplace-style seller app, that is, via an SNP. You choose a seller app yourself, or ask ONDC's onboarding support to help match you with one.
Live seller apps include names such as Mystore, Fynd, and eSamudaay, among others. Crucially, you choose your SNP and operate on your own terms, which means fees, catalogue tools, and support quality differ between them. Compare at least two before you commit.
The step-by-step go-live
- Pick a Seller Network Participant. Shortlist seller apps by category fit (grocery, food, fashion, electronics, services), take rate, and quality of onboarding support.
- Register your business. Expect to provide business name and type, address, contact details, PAN, GSTIN, and a bank account for settlement.
- Submit documents and clear verification. The SNP and ONDC run a verification step to confirm the business is genuine before you are approved.
- Digitise your catalogue. Add products with accurate titles, prices, images, variants, and stock. Catalogue quality directly drives discoverability, because buyer apps rank and display your listings.
- Configure serviceability and logistics. Set the pincodes you serve and decide whether to self-ship or use an ONDC logistics provider that bids to deliver your orders.
- Go live and monitor. Once approved, your catalogue becomes visible across participating buyer apps. From there you manage orders, returns, ratings, and settlements through your SNP dashboard.
The economics: ONDC fees versus Amazon and Flipkart
This is where founders should slow down, because the "low commission" story is true but layered. There are three separate charges to model.
- ONDC network infrastructure fee. From 1 January 2025, ONDC levies a fee of ₹1.5 on each successful transaction above ₹250. It is billed to Seller Network Participants rather than to you directly, and orders that are cancelled before fulfilment or returned within the specified window are exempt.
- Buyer-app finder fee. The buyer app charges this for surfacing your product to a customer. It is typically a low single-digit percentage of order value, and some buyer apps have at times waived it. You can choose to absorb this fee or pass it to the customer as a convenience fee.
- Seller-app service fee. Your SNP sets its own charge, which is negotiable and varies widely. Seller-side commissions have historically run in the low double digits, while some seller apps advertise flat rates as low as around 1%.
Now compare with the incumbents. On the large marketplaces, category commissions vary widely, and once collection, fixed, and shipping fees are added, all-in deductions on Amazon and Flipkart commonly land somewhere in the region of 20% to 35% of the selling price, depending on the category. The headline for ONDC is a materially lower and more transparent take rate, but read your SNP contract carefully, because the buyer-app fee, the seller-app fee, logistics, and the GST charged on those fees all stack up.
Where ONDC fits a D2C or SMB strategy
Treat ONDC as a distribution multiplier, not a replacement for your own store. Its strengths are multi-homing (list once, appear across many buyer apps), a lower and negotiable take rate, and no single-platform lock-in, so you keep leverage. For a D2C brand, that means incremental demand from buyer apps you would never build integrations with individually, at a marginal cost far below marketplace commissions. For an SMB or local retailer, it is a low-friction way to reach online buyers in your own pincodes, especially in grocery, food, and everyday categories where ONDC volumes are strongest.
Be honest about the trade-offs. ONDC's scale is real but still a fraction of the incumbents: monthly retail purchases were around 3.6 million in March 2024, up from roughly 600,000 six months earlier. Discovery, buyer trust, and a consistent post-sale experience across a fragmented set of apps are still maturing. You own quality and service through your ratings, and you will handle returns and grievances across multiple buyer apps. For most founders, the pragmatic play is to run ONDC as a third leg: your own D2C website for brand and margin, the large marketplaces for reach, and ONDC for low-cost, portable, incremental distribution.
The compliance checklist before you list
- PAN and a valid GSTIN. Most seller apps require a GSTIN to onboard. The GST Council has waived mandatory registration for small sellers with goods turnover up to ₹40 lakh (₹20 lakh for services) who sell intra-state through e-commerce operators, a change that took effect in 2023, but many SNPs still ask for a GSTIN in practice. Confirm the exact requirement with your chosen app.
- A settlement bank account in the business name.
- Category and product compliance, for example FSSAI registration for food, and BIS or other applicable marks.
- Accurate serviceable pincodes and a realistic returns policy, since both feed directly into your ratings and repeat orders.
The bottom line
ONDC will not, on its own, replace a marketplace or your own website. But for founders who want cheaper, portable distribution and are willing to manage a slightly more hands-on channel, it is now a credible third pillar of an Indian go-to-market plan. Choose your Seller Network Participant carefully, model the full stack of fees rather than the headline commission, and start in the categories and pincodes where the network already has real order liquidity.