The Bengaluru-based startup has begun piloting with ONDC since August with an ‘ONDC Food’ feature newly embedded within the Ola app, multiple sources have told ET. The feature is currently in pilot phase and is open to Ola employees only.
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The management sent out an email to all employees on August 24 asking them to share feedback on the closed pilot, as per ET’s review. An Ola spokesperson did not respond to ET’s request for comment on the matter.
Employees of Ola can now access multiple restaurants and food brands listed on ONDC via the Ola app for food delivery, as an alternative to popular apps Swiggy and Zomato.
Try, try again
The development is the Bhavish Aggarwal-founded firm’s latest experiment in the food-delivery space. Earlier efforts have all failed.
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In 2015, Ola had first launched a 20-minute food delivery service called Ola Cafe, across Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In 2016, Ola Cafe shut down. In 2017, the business acquired Foodpanda India in an all-stock deal.In 2019, it shut Foodpanda India and said it would focus on cloud kitchens under Ola Foods. In 2021, Ola Foods CEO Pranay Jivrajka quit. In 2022, the company began experimenting with 10-minute food delivery through Ola Dash, its 10-minute grocery delivery service. Same year, it went on to put its kitchen equipment on sale and made plans to integrate private brands with Ola Dash.
Ola Dash was also shut down in early 2022.
“This ONDC integration works out great for Ola because now they do not have the hassles of figuring out integration of the restaurant partners and consumers. The next step would be to open the food delivery to consumers beyond employees,” a person directly familiar with the matter told ET.
The ONDC platform serves as an intermediary between buyer-side and seller-side of e-commerce services through buyer and seller apps.
A seller app here refers to an application such as Magicpin that interacts with sellers, can receive buyer requests and, in response, publish a seller’s catalogue of goods and services and fulfill buyer orders. A buyer side app, on the other hand, is the end-customer facing application responsible for demand generation or transaction origination. Paytm is an example.
Notably, ONDC is viewed as a challenger by online shopping, online mobility and food-delivery marketplaces. In food delivery, restaurants and food chains on ONDC are able to price their offerings more competitively since commissions are lower or non-existent, depending on the buyer-seller agreements.