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Antler, as a global early-stage venture capital firm, is on a mission to empower and accelerate the growth of exceptional entrepreneurs. Through our New Venture Field, we're actively seeking pioneering business solutions from professionals and startups like yours.

What We're Looking For:

Innovation: Bring forth ideas that push the boundaries of what's possible. We're keen on solutions that address current market needs or anticipate future trends.

Impact: Propose ideas/solutions that have the potential to create meaningful change and contribute positively to industries and communities.

Viability: While we appreciate bold ideas, we also value a clear understanding of the market, potential challenges, and a well-thought-out business strategy.

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Why Build for Bharat Hackathon?

Impactful Solutions: Your ideas matter! We're on the lookout for innovative solutions that can make a real impact on the technology and e-commerce sectors in Bharat

Diverse Participation: Whether you're a student eager to showcase your skills, a professional developer seeking a new challenge, or a startup with a vision, there's a place for you in our vibrant initiative.

Networking Opportunities: Connect with like-minded individuals, industry experts, and potential collaborators who share your passion for technology and e-commerce.

What We're Seeking:

Creativity: Bring your wildest ideas to the table. We're looking for solutions that push the boundaries and challenge the status quo.

Collaboration: This is a chance to work together with diverse talents. Form a team, brainstorm, and create something truly exceptional.

Relevance: Develop solutions that address real challenges in the e-commerce landscape. Whether it's streamlining processes, enhancing user experiences, or tackling sustainability – we want to see your ingenuity at work.

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THEME:

Logistics

PROBLEM NAME:

Reverse Logistics

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Customers on the Network should have a seamless experience when it comes to returning products that they are not happy with. Having said that, just like any other marketplace, some buyers may replace the original product with a fraudulent product or a damaged product while returning which cause huge loss to the seller/ecommerce companies. This issue can be further exaggerated in an unbundled environment, where accountability is not centralized.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

There are no standard rules to check the authenticity of the returned product. The picker who is picking up the returned product from the buyer is not checking the product while pickup or the buyer is smart to replace the original product with a fraudulent product and the picker is not equipped with the right process and techniques to identify the fraudulent product.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Create an automated solution that can help calculate the probability of fraudulent/damaged/incorrect returns and mechanism to control the fraud rates to minimal (best in class) on the Network, without impacting the customer experience of returns. The solution should take into account key considerations of the Seller Apps & LSPs (For example: How much time the delivery agent can spend on each pickup, etc).

Deliverables:
1. Assessment of return rates by various parameters and default rate of returns.
2. Propose an algorithm that triggers the pickup agent with a series of checks that need to be done before accepting the pickup.
3. Post Observation period, imply the impact of the solution on the KPIs and also monitor customer complaints on Returns

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THEME:

Logistics

PROBLEM NAME:

Last Mile Hyperlocal

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

The current Hyperlocal delivery cost is upwards of Rs 50/order for a serviceable radius of approx 5 km. Reducing the cost per order further seems to be a challenge. However, given the unique opportunities presented by the open network, there is scope to further reduce the cost of delivery.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

Delivery cost primarily includes:
1) Pickup cost,
2) Delivery cost, and
3) Insurance cost.
Innovation is needed to identify chokepoints across one or all legs to bring down the overall cost for customers.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Build a solution which effectively reduces the delivery cost of food delivery to below Rs 25/order for a 3 km radius (essentially best in class), utilising the unique opportunities presented by the open network. Innovation can be done across one or all legs to bring down the cost for customers over the network.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Onboarding Sellers & Digitizing Catalog

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Currently, the onboarding process for a seller onto a platform is a bottleneck. The process is both complex and time-consuming. Essentially sellers cannot complete the onboarding process by themselves, and go live on the network. Once onboarded, digitizing the catalogue of a store is a big challenge and often very expensive. These challenges are major bottlenecks for new sellers joining the network.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

The present seller onboarding process entails multiple manual verification procedures including KYC checks, licence verifications, and other due diligence which often introduce dependencies that are outside the control of the seller and the platform. These dependencies not only lead to delays in the onboarding of new sellers but also entail additional costs. Additionally, digitising a seller's catalogue can be a further time-consuming process and act as a barrier due to
1) lack of vernacular language support,
2) low digital literacy,
3) highly dynamic SKU count,
4) high cost of digitizing a store.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Demonstrate a workable solution to onboard a new seller eg a Grocery seller with 5000+ catalogue items and create its digital catalogue in sub 4 hours. The solution should include -
1) Registeration of seller and KYC check
2) Digitizing catalogue (5000 sample size) using innovative techniques such as Voice, Scan, Camera etc and have vernacular support

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Order Management & Inventory Management for grocery

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Today, despite the existing multiple POS solution providers in the market, grocery sellers are not able to easily manage their inventory in real-time, which is a necessity for digital trade. This can lead to the seller having lower order volumes which in turn can lead to a lower ROI and ultimately lead to the seller abandoning the digital medium altogether.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

The reasons can be manifold like -
1) Lack of a mobile-friendly product (i.e. requiring a computer),
2) Vernacular language problem/Non-availability of alternate interfaces such as voice-based controls,
3) High SKU count, highly volatile inventory and highly dynamic environment in a grocery store, which can make it difficult to manage a POS,
4) Lack of reliable internet connectivity and
5) Lack of education/ awareness about the optimum use of a POS system. For a grocery seller to succeed online, having a system enabled to manage inventory and demand is critical and hence the solution should address these problems.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Build an order and inventory management system that enables grocery sellers to update their inventory, create a digital catalogue, provide demand estimation, and enable discounts. The system should also have one or more of the following features: 1) be simple and mobile-based,
2) work without an active internet connection,
3) have support for voice controls or other alternative accessibility features,
4) have vernacular language support,
5) enable a seller to easily manage a high SKU count, volatile inventory and an environment with potentially less space,
6) enable demand estimation to enable optimum inventory stocking

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Advertising/Marketing as a services

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

In the traditional, platform world, a seller has only one entity with which it needs to negotiate to place ads or enter into a sponsored/ boosted/ featured results programme. In an open network, if the same logic were to be followed, a seller would have to coordinate with multiple buyer apps, with limited information as to how much reach and ROI those ads will yield. An efficient solution is therefore required to enable sellers to place ads with buyer apps in an informed manner, with minimal effort, and in a way that they can maximise their impact.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

In the open network, the demand is not aggregated in one platform. Multiple buyer apps together represent the universe of demand in the network. Therefore, sellers who want to place ads or purchase marketing services would have to negotiate terms with all of the buyer apps separately. Furthermore, due to the unbundled nature of the system, no single entity would have the intelligence for a seller to understand which buyer apps to engage with and how due to the data in the network being federated across multiple nodes.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Build a solution for an NP to be able to effectively run sponsored advertisements/run marketing campaigns across buyer NPs. The solution should demonstrate the capability to efficiently engage with multiple buyer NPs on the network, and assess and recommend the best combination to effective campaigns.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Personalized Experience to Customers

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

"There is a significant drop-off post a customer searches or selects a product on the Network. In the Platform world, there are personalized recommendations for the customers to expedite their decision process. In an unbundled environment as well, while each Buyer NP can provide a similar experience to the Customer, we need a mechanism to facilitate the Customers to get personalized recommendations on products, discounts/offers, etc basis their attributes on the Network. The Sellers on the Network should also be able to relay their personalized offers to the customers on the Network."

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

With the plethora of choices now available to the customers on the Network, finding relevant & customized is an issue for a customer and may cause high drop-off rates as customers find other platforms more relatable that cater to their personalized needs. Given that the data of the customer's choices is fragmented across various entities in a Network, such a cohesive view of the customer's attributes is not possible in the current framework.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Your solution should provide a clear framework by which the Network attributes of a Customer can be collected, feedback be passed to the seller NP and yet maintain the data privacy and competition norms of the Network Participants. And how this solution would be implemented and the impact on each NP.
Defined KPIs impacted could be:
1. Increase in search to cart and cart to confirm conversion rates

Deliverables:
1. Create a clear ask of your Data requirements for this problem statement and how you would assess the impact on the KPIs above ( You could also define your own metrics).
2. Specify a very small cohort on which you would like to test your solution. be clear about the Observation period.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Data as a service

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Many of the NPs and the sellers and in fact, even potential participants need help with business insights to find market opportunities, optimise their logistics costs, etc and as of now reach out to ONDC. However, given that ONDC as an entity is only a facilitator and not an Operator, it does not and should not have visibility to data that can help such entities. How can we create an ecosystem for entities to exchange data and insights on the Network without breaching the privacy policies and Transaction Level contracts?

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

Currently, NPs especially those who do not have a scale of transactions find it difficult to gather business insights related to their business as well as related to the industry which can prove an opportunity for them and help them make necessary changes to grow.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Build a solution for offering Network Observability as a Service

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THEME:

Fintech

PROBLEM NAME:

Financial Services

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Micro-finance, unsecured lending provision to uplift rural populations by providing affordable coverage for agriculture, livestock, and property by creating a transparent, secure, and accessible lending environment, utilising advanced technology that may offer tamper-proof and transparent records of all transactions. Such technology would ensure that every lending and repayment activity is recorded securely and cannot be altered or manipulated enhancing trust between lenders and borrowers and providing an audit trail for regulatory compliance and dispute resolution. In the context of agriculture, the implementation of advanced data analytics techniques to evaluate creditworthiness based on agricultural metrics becomes all the more relevant. For example, by leveraging factors such as weather data, satellite imagery, soil quality and crop yield trends, valuable insights into the potential for a successful agricultural enterprise can be gathered.

CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM :

This challenge arises from the unique characteristics of agricultural income, which is often seasonal, subject to unpredictable weather patterns, and influenced by various market factors. Traditional financial institutions have struggled to effectively assess the creditworthiness of agricultural micro-entrepreneurs due to these complexities.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Your solution should provide a Decentralized peer-to-peer lending ecosystem tailored specifically for agricultural micro-entrepreneurs. There could be multiple use cases within agriculture. Pickup any 1 use case and provide a clear solution on:
1. How data can be collected?
2. What kind of lending institutes can finance these use cases?
3. How will the mechanism work on the Network?

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Catalogue scoring

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Buyer Apps find it difficult to ensure that the catalogue they receive from Seller Apps is of a minimum acceptable quality such that their User Experience is not adversely affected. Example: Imagine receiving a catalogue of Products with no images, no price or incorrect product details.

Given the large volume of items in a catalogue,Buyer Apps need an efficient mechanism to easily gauge the quality of the catalogue.

A ready solution for this does not exist. In most instances the catalogue has to be examined manually.

In the open network, different buyer NPs will have different requirements from sellers with respect to their catalogues, including -
a) Compliance - Ensuring the catalogue complies with the applicable laws (e.g.: Labelling and display regulations under various statutes.
b) Correctness - Authenticity of the catalogue (e.g.: appropriate use of branding)
c) Completeness - The Catalogue should provide some minimum attributes such that the buyer can understand the product features clearly.

Further, the Buyer App has no direct connection with the Seller to be able to do due diligence on them, and only receives the catalogue upon performing a search. This means the usual manual processes deployed to assess catalogue quality are not feasible in the open network.

The objective is to create a catalog scoring mechanism for assessment of compliance, correctness and completeness at an aggregate level, as explained above.

Catalog scoring mechanism should define a set of granular assessment parameters & weight for each parameter and using this compute an objective store for a merchant catalog.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

• Showcase a solution that defines a catalog scoring mechanism and uses it to compute catalog score for a merchant.
• Catalog scoring mechanism (including parameters & weights) should be transparent & extensible.
• Provide a mechanism to measure the throughput of catalog scoring.
• All artefact used should be elaborated.
• All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Indic language support

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Currently, online commerce only caters to a specific segment of customers who can type the name of the product in English and read all the details carefully before purchasing the product. However, if the vision of achieving ecommerce penetration of 75% needs to be fulfilled, we need to enhance customer adoption and provide a more inclusive and accessible experience. Example: Individuals who may not be comfortable typing, or comfortable in English.
The objective is to support Indic language for input & output, i.e. accept Indic language input through text / voice / image interface & translate to English and vice-versa.
Several Indic languages have multiple dialects and the most commonly used dialect for a language should be used. Indic language for text / image output should use open fonts.
Algorithm for linguistic collation of Indic language output should be included.
Newer technologies, with pipelined architecture, such as transformers (with text2vec) may be evaluated for this solution.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Create a solution whereby a customer can input in an Indic language / English using text / Voice / image and for which the output is created in the same interface (text / voice / image) in the corresponding language, i.e. Indic language to English, English to Indic language. Following e-commerce flows may be considered for input:
a) Search & Discovery
b) Payment Confirmation
c) Post Order updates.
d) Customer service

All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Negotiation engine

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

A network of e-commerce participants & marketplaces would involve negotiation;
Negotiations can be related to terms of trade (called Transaction contract in ONDC) or other product attributes such as price, settlement terms, etc;
Negotiation would typically involve one party proposing their terms & conditions as above and the counterparty either accepting each term or proposing their counter-terms;
Negotiation ends either when both parties agree to common terms & conditions or one or both of the parties decides to terminate the transaction.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution for negotiation, with embedded intelligence to determine whether terms of both parties are converging or diverging, which can be actioned upon;

All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail & Logistics

PROBLEM NAME:

Optimal storage & retrieval in m*n sparse matrix

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Pincode based serviceability allows merchants to define the pincodes where they can deliver their products & services;
In ONDC, definition & verification of pincode based serviceability is separated, i.e. merchants define the pincodes they serve and buyer apps verify whether a particular pincode (of buyer) can be served by any of the available merchants;
Considering there are more than 30K pincodes and at least 100 million merchants (of which about 10% may enable pincode based serviceability), this requires an optimal data structure for storing the pincode serviceability by merchant (i.e. a sparse matrix of 10M*30K) so that verification is near real-time.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution for optimal representation of the m*n sparse matrix (defined above) and near real-time retrieval from this data structure.
Solution should include input interface for the m*n sparse matrix and one or more pincodes to search for.

All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail & Logistics

PROBLEM NAME:

Conversational interface

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Customers are unable to 'look & feel' the product sitting at the comfort of their homes, so there is always an ambiguity of not knowing that their purchase was right or not. Building trust in the product or seller in an online marketplace has always been a challenge.
This is specifically true in India, where the Customer relies on its physical shopping experience, with many shopping assistants to build trust on their purchase or the seller.
Additionally, non-tech savvy users find it difficult to navigate through non-intuitive online interfaces.
The objective is to create a conversational interface that guides non-tech savvy buyers through the online shopping experience while also providing the immersive experience that provides a real world “shopping feel”. Immersive experience would be useful for fashion shopping where the buyer gets to “try out” whatever they’re trying to buy.
The conversational interface should provide interaction through natural language speech / text & similar types of intuitive interfaces.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution that provides a conversational interface that meets the requirements above.

All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Price optimization engine

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

The aim is to transform the way pricing strategies are traditionally devised and employed within the grocery retail industry.
Sellers need to know the best pricing to be set for a product or service to nudge conversions on buyer applications end. The price(s) should be valid for a limited duration.
At its core, the application should be agile, intuitive, and data-driven, with the ability to swiftly adapt prices in real-time. It should include a multifaceted array of factors, including but not limited to the ever-shifting demands of consumers, the nuanced dynamics of product shelf life, and the real-time status of inventory levels.
Focus on products and categories where there is margin for a cost change that impacts the customer ( Example: Perishable products, Services).
In the application, customers check for pricing received from the various seller platforms to get the best value for their purchase based on factors such as Inventory, Terms of Trade, Margins, Strategic Call, time of the day and current market prices.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution that will provide the seller a recommendation of the price, with time range validity, that should be offered by the seller, when there is a search for a product or a service. With this information, the seller should be able to decide and select the price for their products.
All artefact used to compute the prices should be elaborated.
Application should be able to demonstrate the change in prices when the values of the variables are changed.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Catalog digitization

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

The challenge is to develop innovative solutions that leverage cutting-edge technologies to seamlessly digitalize and enhance product catalogs, offering a user-friendly experience for sellers and seller apps.
Consider a sample catalog with at least 1000 SKUs, with attributes such as SKU id, product name, description, price, image, inventory, colour, size, brand, etc.
This catalog is to be digitized using a combination of intuitive interfaces such as text / voice / image input, with text & voice input using any of the Indic languages.
In some cases, a combination of these interfaces are required to digitize an SKU e.g. scan image which pre-fills the product name from the repository, with the remaining attributes filled using text or voice input.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution that allows catalog digitization using a combination of interfaces as explained above. Provide a mechanism to measure the throughput of digitization (for e.g x number of catalog digistation in one day).
All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Catalog indexing engine

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Merchant catalogs can be of different types, as per the category e.g. grocery, fashion, electronics, etc;
Each catalog will have multiple items with each item (SKU) defined using attribute key/value pairs that defines a particular aspect of the item (e.g. colour, product name, price, etc.);
Optimal catalog search, using structured query or unstructured text, requires an efficient indexing engine that can support either type of search for catalogs of any size;
Unstructured queries typically use an inverted index (e.g. elasticsearch) that facilitates efficient retrieval of documents associated with the search query;
Inverted index can also be used to engineer prompts for catalog LLMs.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution that indexes catalog in situ.
Catalog indexing engine should support efficient retrieval from catalogs of different sizes using any combination of unstructured & structured queries;
Catalog indexing engine may use indexing layer such as inverted index (e.g. Lucene-derived indexes), catalog LLMs, etc, with bidirectional integration with the original catalog source.
Provide a mechanism to measure the throughput of catalog indexing (for e.g. catalog record indexed per min).
All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Logistics

PROBLEM NAME:

Using open source maps

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

ONDC aims to democratise the e-commerce space and hence would contain amalgamation of a variety of Buyer Apps and Seller Apps.
For the network to reach that scale, it becomes imperative to use open source components to reduce the cost and make it affordable for even the smallest of the Buyer Apps and Seller apps.
The objective is to allow buyer and seller apps to use Open source maps for e-commerce functionality such as creating polygon(s) of points, generating motorable paths between 2 points, reverse-geocoding address to point on map, computing motorable distance between 2 points, mapping point to polygon / path interactively / using API, etc.
Point should support multiple representations such as gps coordinates, Google s2 cells, Uber h3 cells, etc.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Showcase a solution that uses open source maps to enable functionality defined above; existing open source maps such as OpenStreetMap, Mapbox, etc. may be used.
All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.

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THEME:

Retail Commerce

PROBLEM NAME:

Legal compliance & product safety

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Every e-commerce merchant has to comply with multiple central & state regulations to ensure product & service safety for the buyer;
Some of the regulations include Legal Metrology rules (for packaged products), FSSAI labelling & display regulations, etc;
Some of the categories like mobility have regulations defined at the state level.
All regulations are published on public repositories of Central / State Governments.
The objective here is to create a normalised representation of legal compliances that an e-commerce company has to be compliant with;
This normalised representation can be populated by linking to Govt public repositories where these regulations are published and scraping existing & new notifications as and when notified.

Solution Expected & Deliverables :

Domains include Grocery, electronics, F&B, Fashion, Agriculture
Showcase a solution that provides normalised representation of compliances required for product / service by category.
All artefact used should be elaborated.
All assumptions should be elaborated.