Gupshup announces Conversational Buyer App for ONDC

Delhi: Gupshup has announced Conversational Buyer App on the ONDC network, at their flagship event Conversations 2024 in Delhi. It enables buyers to use a Whatsapp-based conversational UI to discover, browse, and buy products from sellers across the ONDC network, without needing to download any other mobile app. 

Gupshup aims to also offer this product capability to its enterprise customers that want to integrate conversational commerce into their chatbots. 

Beerud Sheth, CEO, Gupshup, said, “India’s diverse population uses different mobile tools, varied languages, and possesses different levels of tech-savvy. But they all know how to chat via WhatsApp. Delivering conversational experiences via the messaging app is the only way to reach everyone. Gupshup’s Buyer App on ONDC brings the vast commerce network to users nationwide, usable in any language, quickly and easily. This will truly transform digital commerce on a population scale in India.” 

Gaurav Kachhawa, Chief Product Officer at Gupshup, said, “Gupshup Conversation Cloud makes it easy for businesses to build rich conversational commerce experiences with AI-powered natural language interactions, in any language, over text and voice, with deep personalization, across the entire customer lifecycle. This ONDC Buyer App is the perfect demonstration of the significant impact of conversational experiences and the unique ability of Gupshup’s platform to enable them.”

The Buyer App is in Beta and will initially have limited availability, allowing users to order food and beverages like biryani on WhatsApp. Customers will be able to share their location over chat, browse sellers close to them, order food, and make payments right from WhatsApp. 

Support for additional conversational channels such as Google RCS and Voice is to be launched soon. 

ONDC, which stands for Open Network for Digital Commerce, is a collaborative initiative that brings together various merchants and brands on a unified digital commerce platform. This interconnected network was developed by the Indian government's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.