Barely three weeks after PhonePe launched Pincode, a hyperlocal shopping app exclusively built for the Open Network for Digital Commerce, the government wants e-commerce companies to join the ONDC through their main platforms rather than building a new app.

“I would tell [ONDC chief] T. Koshy to exclude those e-commerce platforms which are not coming to the network with their main platforms. Some are building ONDC-specific platforms. That’s not our aim,” said commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday, according to Moneycontrol.

The minister reasoned that by building a separate app “you are taking the benefit of ONDC by availing of the sellers, but you are not giving your consumer base the benefit of choice of buying from any of the sellers”.

This doesn’t bode well for PhonePe. The Walmart-backed payments major was the first to launch a dedicated app for the ONDC, a government platform that is meant to build a network of e-commerce companies, primarily to reduce the dominance of giants Amazon and Flipkart. The idea is to level the playing field for small sellers. Companies can operate as sellers of goods, apps for end-buyers or logistics.

Pincode will focus on hyperlocal commerce and is available on both Google Play and App Store. For now, it will go live only in Bengaluru and then expand to 10 cities this year. Customers can search for stores across categories like grocery, pharma, electronics, home decor and fashion. They can have multiple carts at the same time, with one active cart per store

Similarly, Axis Bank is building an app for the ONDC, Moneycontrol reported earlier.

Speaking at an event organized by the ONDC, Goyal was also quoted as saying: “We were grappling with the problems arising out of big tech in the e-commerce space, a threat to small retail across the country. It might not be tomorrow...one can say 3-4% of retail-only e-commerce now, but we have a long-term vision. And this government is desirous of crystal gazing into the future to plan the destiny of 140 crore Indians.”