India's 85 million-plus kirana stores — the backbone of the country's retail economy — moved a step closer to the digital mainstream on Saturday, 31 October 2026, as Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal chaired a Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Roundtable under the Bharat Commerce Chintan Shivir, focused squarely on rewiring general trade through technology.

DigiDukaan at the Centre of the Conversation

The roundtable zeroed in on ONDC's DigiDukaan initiative — a programme designed to bring neighbourhood kirana retailers onto an open, interoperable digital commerce network without forcing them into any single proprietary platform. Goyal said deliberations covered 'expanding digital technology adoption among Kirana retailers, enhancing market access and improving supply chain efficiency,' making clear the government sees general trade modernisation as a strategic priority, not an afterthought.

ONDC — the Open Network for Digital Commerce — is backed by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and has been building an open protocol stack since its pilots launched in 2022. The architecture allows a small shop in Patna or Pune to receive digital orders from any buyer-side app on the network, levelling the field against large, vertically integrated e-commerce platforms.

Why Kirana Digitisation Is a Hard Problem

For all the progress of UPI and digital payments, India's fast-moving consumer goods supply chain still runs largely on informal credit, personal relationships, and distributor visits. Onboarding a kirana store onto a digital ordering and inventory system means solving for smartphone literacy, last-mile logistics, and working-capital access — simultaneously. That is the terrain DigiDukaan is designed to navigate.

The CPG sector — manufacturers and distributors of packaged food, personal care, and household goods — has a direct stake here. A digitised general trade channel means real-time demand signals, leaner inventories, and reduced cash-in-transit risk. Goyal's emphasis on 'fostering collaboration among industry stakeholders' signals the Ministry is pushing for a co-investment model rather than top-down mandates.

ONDC's Broader Digital Public Infrastructure Play

The DigiDukaan push sits inside a larger architecture of digital public infrastructure that successive administrations have assembled — UPI for payments, Account Aggregator for credit data flows, and now ONDC for commerce itself. The logic is consistent: build an open protocol, let the private sector build products on top, and let small businesses benefit without paying platform rent. ONDC's reported onboarding numbers and transaction volumes will be the real scorecard for whether this roundtable translates into action on the ground.

The Commerce Ministry is expected to track DigiDukaan-linked kirana onboarding metrics and may follow up with digital retail standards that formalise the pathway for millions of micro-traders still operating entirely offline.

The kirana store has survived supermarkets, modern retail chains, and quick-commerce apps. Whether it can absorb a digital layer — and on its own terms — may be the defining retail story of the next decade.