Despite over 8500 farmer producer organisations (FPOs) being on board of the government’s e-commerce platform ONDC to sell their produce, high shipping charges by private couriers are hindering their business growth.
India Post, with its extensive rural network over 1.64 lakh post offices, hasn’t yet joined the pan-India digital platform to facilitate transportation of unique agricultural products, at reasonable costs. Currently, India Post services are available on the ONDC through third-party logistics aggregators, which pushes up shipping charges.
“Many private logistical players such as Delhivery, OLA, Ecom-express, Shadowfax etc have already in the ONDC network. However, the on-boarding of India Post will give access to the affordable and stable logistics to the small farmers, sellers and MSME’s across the country,” a senior official told FE.
In addition, currently parcel prices by private logistic players are available for a minimum package weight of 2 kg, which need to be reduced to around 250 kg, according to farmers’ collectives.
“High shipping charges are a deterrent for the consumers while private logistic aggregators often cancel orders,”Hari Om Nagar, business development officer, Rich Returns, a FPO based in Kota Rajasthan said. The collective with 800 farmers members, had sold Rs 10 lakh worth of items on ONDC against the overall sales turnover exceeding Rs 1 crore in 2024-25.
Email and text sent to the department of posts did not elicit any response till going to press.
Meanwhile, despite the high shipping charges, daily transactions of orders received by FPOs recently clocked over 2,000 (valued over Rs 4 lakh) on the ONDC platform, which is the highest so far. FPOs started joining the ONDC platform in April, 2023.
At present these collectives sell unique agricultural products including 200 varieties of rice, pulses, millets, honey, mushrooms, spices, and value-added products ONDC.
ONDC supports and trains FPOs with free registration, development and digitisation of product catalogues, generating shipping labels, identifying delivery partners, and facilitating digital payments so that they can leverage the platform for marketing their products.
The network has more than 30 digital applications including Mystore, PayTM, Magicpin, and Delhivery, covering intercity logistics, and platforms for buyers and sellers.
To provide farmers with better market access, an agriculture ministry official said, “The move to bring FPOs on ONDC aims to empower them with direct access to digital marketing, online payment, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer transactions.”
The platform is being promoted by the government as an alternative to global e-commerce majors such as Amazon and Walmart for supporting small enterprises.
In April 2022, the government had launched ONDC, as a section 8 company established by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade.
In addition to ONDC, the farmers collectives are using platform such as electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) and the government e marketplace (GeM).The commercial gains from trading in agriculture inputs like fertilisers, pesticides and varieties of seeds, under a government licensing programme, are also helping them to grow.
A senior official said the financial assistance and marketing support to these collectives, where over 3 million farmers have equities, would continue till FY26. Most of these entities were formed in the last couple of years. Over 10,000 FPOs are currently functional.
The agriculture ministry’s scheme has a budgetary provision of Rs 6865 crore for the five years since FY21.