Delhi govt portal for local shops to go live soon with first 10,000 vendors

After a months-long delay, the Delhi government will launch soon its e-marketplace, Dilli Bazaar e-portal, which will host products from thousands of traders, offer a digital walk-through to visitors, and provide a global platform to boost growth and create employment, officials aware of the matter said.

The work on the e-portal is in its final stages, the officials said. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal reviewed its progress at a meeting in the Delhi secretariat on Wednesday.A Delhi government official said that the platform will be initially launched soon with around 10,000 vendors in the first phase, and the number will be eventually scaled up to 100,000.

“Currently, the Arvind Kejriwal government is in the final stages of launching the platform, which will soon be available to Delhi sellers. Within six months of its launch, the Delhi government aims to bring over 100,000 shops in Delhi to the Dilli Bazaar portal, offering them a 24×7 digital storefront,” a government official said, asking not to be named.

The Delhi government’s project is running on a nearly seven-months delay. On June 21 last year, Kejriwal fixed December as the deadline for launching the e-portal. The deadline was missed owing to what the government said was non-cooperation between concerned officials.

The project is being planned in two phases. In the first phase, it will list products from city traders, while the second phase will include listing of services from service providers. The traders will be able to list their products on the platform for free, officials said.
To be sure, the central government already runs an Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform that seeks to create a secure, interoperable, and inclusive digital commerce infrastructure. It is a common digital platform for various stakeholders, including consumers, sellers, service providers, and government entities, and enables businesses of all sizes to reach a wider audience.

The Dilli Bazaar e-portal, however, in a first, provides a virtual experience allowing users to explore Delhi’s iconic as well as local markets and browse through the products on offer, officials said. Simultaneously, it will also be compliant with the ONDC initiative, they said.
Other features of the portal include product cataloguing, market location, geo-tagging, map layouts, and e-payment, industry minister Saurabh Bharadwaj told the CM at the meeting. It will also have a dedicated team for complete branding solutions, including visiting the markets, an official said.

All shopkeepers and start-ups in Delhi will be allowed to register on the e-marketplace, and all of them will have a personalised digital storefront which will list all their products. “Customers can search through the portal using shopkeeper names, market names, and product names. The portal will also serve as a repository of verified Delhi sellers with comprehensive product catalogues. This provision will provide digital presence to Delhi shopkeepers on the Dilli Bazaar Portal, opening up a wide range of opportunities for them,” the government said.

The e-marketplace is also going to work as a discovery platform for local markets and will introduce virtual market tours. “Customers and visitors will be able to view market streets and shops, making their purchasing and itinerary planning more convenient,” the government said in a statement.