The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), in collaboration with Google Cloud India, Antler in India, Paytm, Protean and Startup India revealed ‘Build for Bharat’ initiative.
According to the ONDC, the initiative aims to tackle diverse challenges in digital commerce, promoting industry innovation to develop practical solutions in this space.
‘Build for Bharat’ intends to tap into India’s technological and entrepreneurial potential with an expected participation of 200K+ participants representing startups, companies and colleges. Prioritising a participative and ecosystem-driven framework, the initiative is organized at a national scale across 50+ cities with top experts, leaders, VCs and incubators onboard, it said.
The initiative includes, ‘NextGen Ventures’’, which is designed to supercharge venture creation on ONDC. Open to aspiring founders exploring multiple ideas or early-stage founder teams working on an idea, this track provides a pathway to raising capital, launching, scaling companies, and incubating new businesses, it stated.
T Koshy, MD and CEO at ONDC, said, “We are excited to organize this nationwide initiative focused on building innovative solutions for India’s rapidly growing digital commerce ecosystem. Initiatives like ‘Build for Bharat’ will unleash the talent and potential of India’s startup and student community to drive meaningful impact at scale. Through grants, investments and recognition, we hope to nurture the best ideas into sustainable businesses.”
Bikram Singh Bedi, managing Director at Google Cloud India, said “The ‘Build for Bharat’ initiative, provides a platform to develop scalable solutions that can transform the digital ecosystem on a large scale. By bringing together students, startups and businesses, we aim to foster collaboration and innovation towards an inclusive digital economy.”
Nitin Sharma, Partner and Co-founder, Antler in India, said, “Ecommerce requires moving atoms, not just bits, and also requires aggregation of a large number of small players. ONDC has a massive vision around reimagining and unbundling commerce, and we are committed to making more investments into the space.”
Sudhanshu Gupta, Senior Vice President, Paytm said “As a buyer and seller network participant for ONDC, our mission is to bring the power of e-commerce to every seller and buyer in the country. Paytm se ONDC Network has gained massive popularity among users by unlocking the power of the inter-portable network through pricing and availability. We are excited to be a part of the ‘Build for Bharat’ initiative which aims to foster innovation and address the diverse challenges within the digital commerce landscape. This pan-India initiative will bring together the best minds in the country who will fuel a surge of innovative ideas to shape the future of digital commerce in India.”
Suresh Sethi, MD and CEO, Protean eGov Technologies said “’Build for Bharat’ is a brilliant initiative to bring together students, startups and businesses to unlock Bharat’s technological and entrepreneurial capabilities. As pioneers in creating DPIs for the nation, we are delighted to be a part of this collective effort that helps us further our mission of enabling population scale digital, social and financial inclusion through technology.”
