Mumbai, Sep 3 (IANS): The government-run Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is now enabling more than 1.2 crore orders per month, with over six lakh sellers live on the network, it was announced on Tuesday.

ONDC was awarded the prestigious gold award under the category ‘application of emerging technologies for providing citizen-centric services’ in the National Awards for e-Governance (NAeG) at an event here.

The network is empowering a diverse range of sellers, including lakhs of small businesses, artisans, women entrepreneurs, farmers, and street vendors to compete effectively and reach a wider audience.

“ONDC functions with a startup mindset and government scale approach wherein it is adapting to evolving market dynamics with agility, driven by a team of technocrats and mentored by veteran ONDC Advisory Council,” according to Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

By virtue of being interoperable, unbundled, and decentralised, ONDC splits a complex system into discrete microservices that different players can offer separately, with positive outcomes for all. ONDC architecture fosters trust in e-commerce system.

ONDC is further expanding its capabilities for deeper and greater integration with key platforms of the government.

“ONDC will make it possible for inter-locks and linkages across Government platforms to serve common set of beneficiaries for achievement of unified objectives,” the ministry added. ONDC in July reached 430,000 daily orders.

The Network operates in more than 609 cities and delivering to 1,200 cities nationwide. In July, ONDC also launched the auto components and accessories category on the Network. It featured sellers such as Ess Aay Automotive (Hero Genuine).

ONDC also logged a 21 per cent month-on-month growth in transactions to 12 million in July, compared to 10 million in June. The network saw transactions of 374,000 orders in a single day, during the recently concluded T20 World Cup finals, on June 30