Version 2.0: 1st April 2024
This policy applies to Pincode Shopping Solutions Private Limited, a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013, hereby referred to as "Pincode". This policy provides an explanation of the parameters which, individually and/or collectively, are most significant in determining the ranking of goods or sellers on its platform along with the parameters based on which a store will be listed on the platform, subject to terms and conditions stated herein.
- Listing of Seller Platform on the Pincode
- ONDC Protocol, Policies and Taxonomy
- Implemented the latest ONDC API contract, logs validated by ONDC on prod and tested with Pincode on pre-prod
- Adhering to all ONDC policies and signed agreement with ONDC
- Product mapping should be based on ONDC taxonomy
- IGM implemented
- The seller platform should be operating in B2C food category.
- Providing the category based mandatory attributes on network and enable order management capabilities required by ONDC and Pincode published time to time
- The stores of a seller platform will be listed in a phased manner and performance of the sellers/ seller platform with respect to buyer experience will be monitored based on which more stores will be made operational on the platform. In the beginning, 10% of stores or 20 stores (whichever is lower) will be activated based on the seller platform's recommendation, provided stores meet the listing criteria and will be evaluated for 2 weeks/ 100 orders whichever is higher. Further, 20% of the stores of the seller platform will be made live every 2 weeks based on the listing parameters provided the current stores don't breach the temporary suspension criterias.
- ONDC Protocol, Policies and Taxonomy
- Listing of Sellers
- Mandatory attributes for the store and their catalogue is sent on Network either through itself or through any authorized seller network participant
- Sellers will be considered eligible to be on-boarded on Pincode provided:
- they can form legally binding contracts as per the provisions of Indian Contract Act, 1872;
- the quality, quantity of the products sold to the customer are corresponding to the claims made regarding the products at the time of their listing;
- they shall ensure that refund, warranty cancellation and exchange policy is clearly declared;
- they shall not mislead any Buyer by posting false/ paid reviews for products/services;
- they shall make all the requisite disclosures and comply with the requirements under applicable laws including Legal Metrology Laws, the LM (PC) Rules, 2011, BIS requirements, E commerce Rules;
- they shall conform with the provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, Food Safety and Standards (licensing and registration of food business), Regulations, 2011 including all applicable regulations made thereunder, as amended from time to time.
- A particular store will not be listed on Pincode at a particular time and will be displayed through a single seller platform based on overall performance of the seller platform and the below mentioned attributes of the seller
- Assortment and selection in terms of categories and density of catalogue
- Discount and offers on the catalogue
- Product description, attributes and quality of images
- Seller Performance will be measured based on simple average around below mentioned attributes:
- Success rate on API responses and ON_CONFIRM success rate
- Catalogue rejection rate based on ONDC taxonomy and attributes mandated by ONDC
- Order fulfillment within delivery TAT for seller platform managed delivery orders
- Ticket resolution time and response time to customer tickets
- The hyperlocal retail stores will be listed with their legal trade name and logo
- Based on the respective store category, the store should meet standard requirements as published by Pincode.
- Sorting Mechanism of stores and products
- The order in which the stores and its products are displayed to the users will be dynamic based on given key attributes of the store, applied uniformly across all categories:
- Attributes with high weightage
- Number of carts created
- Fill Rate
- Delivery within promised TAT
- Customer tickets and issues
- Delivery Cost
- Attributes with medium weightage
- Assortment and selection in terms of categories and density of catalogue
- Order management time w.r.t order acceptance and processing
- Store views by the user
- Store Operational time
- Order expected delivery time
- Distance of the store
- Issue response time
- Discount and offers on the catalogue
- Consistency with respect to price, catalogue, inventory, store availability, delivery TAT
- Product description, attributes and quality of images
- Attributes with high weightage
Clarification to the above terms - The order in which the stores and its products are displayed to the users will be dynamic based on given key attributes of the store, applied uniformly across all categories:
- Fill rate is calculated as Number of items delivered / (Number of items ordered by user - Items ordered failure attributed to Seller platform - Items ordered canceled by Buyer for buyer's remorse reasons)
- Number of carts created refers to the count of unique carts that were created by the users by adding any item to the cart in respective store
- Issue response time should be aggregate of time taken between the issue raised to response received against the same
- Consistency will be measured based on the response received on API calls for a particular store and item over 20 consecutive API callbacks
- The image quality should be of high resolution with preferably 300 dpi and minimum 500X500 px
- Temporary suspension of sellers: Stores will not be displayed to the users of Pincode based on the performance and availability of the respective seller platform as well as based on the operational efficiency of the seller
- The stores of a seller platform will be subject to get delisted where the respective seller platform has failed to comply with any of the below mentioned
- Seller platform violates the criterias based on which it's sellers got listed on the platform
- High latency, more than 5 seconds is there for sending response to the API calls from the platform
- Non-buyer attributed errors on API responses are more than 2% and ON_CONFIRM failure more than 0.5%
- Delay in order fulfillment for seller platform managed delivery orders by more than 5% orders
- The store performance in terms of customer experience should be in line with the industry standards ensuring the below mentioned parameters are met failing which the stores will be subject to disabled from Pincode app
- Seller violates the parameter required for them to get listed on the platform
- The sellers are required to meet the given operational parameters for continued listing:
- Fill rate of the seller should be at least 95%
- Orders delivered within TAT >= 95% other than any unforeseen scenarios
- Customer issues should be lower than 5% for cases such as Wrong item delivered, Item missing, Item wrongly marked delivered in case of seller's self delivery, Expired or damaged item delivered, products sold at price higher than MRP and other pre-order or post order buyer escalations
- Issue resolution time, as per the Issue and Redressal Grievance policy, is breached in more than 10% of cases
- Ratings of the seller should be above 40% mark of the scale
- There is inconsistency in the price and inventory of the products listed in seller's catalogue, store operational hours, delivery TAT
- The stores of a seller platform will be subject to get delisted where the respective seller platform has failed to comply with any of the below mentioned
- Evaluation and redressal for temporary suspension Once suspended, the store will be disabled for a period of two consecutive weeks. Seller or seller platform will be required to provide the detailed RCA on [email protected] for such an issue with justified resolution that has been deployed to avoid recurrence of the same in future. The Pincode team will evaluate the same and enable the store again on satisfactory resolution within 7 working days of request submitted in the above mentioned manner.
- Permanent suspension of seller platform or seller
- Based on the laws of the country: The stores will be subject to permanent disablement from the platform if sellers either themselves or the respective seller platform are found to be in violation of the applicable laws of India and policies issued by ONDC. To avoid getting delisted, sellers need to ensure that they shall not:
- post any content that is either defamatory, obscene, pornographic, pedophilic, objectionable, patently false, threatens unity or integrity of India;
- indulge in any acts that infringes upon any Intellectual Property Rights of a third parties including sale of counterfeits, fake products;
- upload any program code designed to destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource or disrupt or interfere with the security of any Pincode system resources, accounts;
- list any prescription medicine, medicament, or any product that cannot be sold due to applicable prohibitions or, is barred to be sold through the medium of e-commerce, in terms of applicable laws, including as per the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, The Medical Devices Rules, 2017, Drugs & Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act, 1954 Poison Act, 1919, Pharmacy Act, 1948;
- list any product that may endanger human life/ safety such as car seat belt alarm stoppers, arms and ammunition, harmful chemicals, firecrackers;
- list products above MRP, indicative list any prohibited/ illegal products, restricted either under applicable law or restricted to be sold via e-commerce, including:
- Animal skins, furs, ivory;
- Uniforms, medals of the armed forces that are restricted for use and sale;
- Indian Flag that is not in accordance to the Flag Rules;
- Chinese manjha;
- Prohibited drugs, psychedelic drugs, hallucinogens etc;
- Alcohol and alcoholic beverages;
- Single use plastics.
- Based on sellers' business operations
- The seller or seller platform will be subject to permanent suspension from the platform if they have been found to be temporarily suspended 3 times in a period of 2 months.
- Based on the laws of the country: The stores will be subject to permanent disablement from the platform if sellers either themselves or the respective seller platform are found to be in violation of the applicable laws of India and policies issued by ONDC. To avoid getting delisted, sellers need to ensure that they shall not:
- Settlement to Seller Platforms
- Money will be settled to the seller Network Participants net of Buyer Finder Fees and applicable taxes on T+1 basis where T is the date of Order Delivered. Settlement window shall be 1 day.