Five lakh MSMEs will be digitally upskilled through the Meta Small Business Academy over the next two years to kick off the partnership
New Delhi: ONDC (Open Network For Digital Commerce) and Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, announced on Tuesday that they have joined hands to help small businesses in India build seamless conversational buyer and seller experiences on WhatsApp through Meta’s business and technical solution providers.
Meanwhile, ONDC will help these business solution providers become seller apps, bringing the businesses they service onto the ONDC Network and helping them drive commerce.
Five lakh MSMEs will be digitally upskilled through the Meta Small Business Academy over the next two years to kick off the partnership.
“Our partnership with Meta will not only digitally upskill these businesses but will also enable them to connect with a customer base far and wide,” said T Koshy, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ONDC.
As part of the partnership, Meta will also support Sahayak, ONDC’s WhatsApp chatbot, in enhancing the services offered on the bot as the single point of seller and customer communication for ONDC.
Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President, Meta India, added, “Our partnership with ONDC builds on supporting the government’s vision for Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and furthering our ongoing commitment to skilling small businesses and aiding this digital transformation in the country.”
Earlier this year, Meta launched the ‘WhatsApp Se Wyapaar’ programme to upskill 10 million traders across 29 states in 11 Indian languages on the WhatsApp Business app.
Among the 200 million users of the WhatsApp Business app across the world, more than 60% of them are from India.
