ONDC can’t scale up using discounts: CEO Thampy Koshy

There has been a buzz around the government-backed open network for digital commerce (ONDC) waging a price war against Zomato and Swiggy. ONDC, which has spent a few crores of rupees on discounts, believes the network cannot scale up on doles and they will be discontinued after a few months. ONDC MD & CEO T Koshy speaks to TOI about the growth strategy, big e-commerce firms joining the network. Excerpts:

How has ONDC scaled up?

We are in over 240-odd cities today with 47 network participants. Out of which seven are logistics, 12 are buyers and remaining are seller apps. In first week of January, we saw about 50 daily transactions in the food and grocery space. Currently, that has scaled up to 10,000-20,000 daily transactions.