Guides · ONDC Visibility
ONDC Product Not Showing? 6 Silent Reasons, With Fixes
Updated: August 2026 · 9 min read
✅ Straight answer: If your ONDC product is not showing on buyer apps, it is almost always one of 6 silent filters: delivery radius, missing label declarations, weak photos/attributes, crawl timing, settings that never reached the network, or incomplete statutory data. None of them shows you an error. This guide gives you a check for each one, with real numbers from our own seller network.
Here are two real sellers from our platform. Both food sellers. Both live on the ONDC Network in the same weeks. Both catalogs went out to buyer apps every night.
Seller A · 29 products
1
total orders in the period
Seller B · 27 products
769
total orders, same weeks
Same network. Same category. A 769-to-1 difference — caused by one data field.
The reason was one data field. Seller B had the packaged-commodity label declaration complete on 27 of 27 products. Seller A had it complete on 1 of 29. Buyer apps quietly hid the other 28 products. No error. No warning. Nothing on any screen.
That is the hardest thing to accept about the ONDC Network: when your listing is blocked, nobody tells you. A product can be missing from every buyer app while your dashboard shows everything green.
We run a Seller App on the network, so we see both sides of the wire. These are the 6 filters that hide listings, in the order you should check them.
📊 The 6 silent filters between your catalog and the buyer
Each filter acts silently — no error reaches your screen.
1. Is your delivery radius quietly set too small?
Every catalog that goes out on the network carries a serviceability tag: “this shop serves buyers within X km.” Buyer apps filter on it before showing you to anyone. A buyer outside your radius will never see your shop, and neither of you will ever know.
This filter bit us early. One of our first sellers wanted to serve buyers across India. But the radius value going out on the wire said 5 km. To the whole network, that shop existed only inside one small circle of one small town. There was no error anywhere, because nothing was technically wrong. The tag said 5, and buyer apps obeyed it.
The night the radius was corrected to pan-India, the shop’s storefront card appeared on a buyer app about 30 minutes after that app’s next catalog crawl. Same products, same photos. Only the circle changed.
Check it: Open your seller dashboard and find your delivery radius setting. Does the number match who you actually want to sell to? If you deliver yourself, keep it honest and local. If a delivery partner ships for you, a tiny radius throws away the whole point of being online.
2. Is the Legal Metrology label declaration complete on every product?
This is the filter behind the 1-vs-769 story above, and it deserves its own explanation.
Indian law (the Legal Metrology rules for packaged goods) says every packaged product sold online must display declarations: manufacturer or packer name and address, net quantity, MRP, month and year of packing, and customer care details. ONDC’s network policy backs this with a specific rule — Rule 2.3.8 — which allows a buyer app to hide any listing whose statutory information is missing.
Now the trap. An honest seller platform will not invent this data. If your product is missing even one piece — say, the packing month — the platform must send the product without the declaration block, and buyer apps are allowed to hide it. Silently.
That is exactly what happened to Seller A: 28 of 29 products were missing one or more declaration fields, so they went out without the block, and buyer apps dropped them. One product was complete. That one product got the one order.
The good news is how fast this reverses. Once Seller A’s manufacturer details were completed, the very next catalog push went out 29 of 29 complete, and the products became visible.
Check it: For every packaged product, confirm these five fields are filled in your dashboard: manufacturer/packer name, full address, net quantity, MRP, month + year of packing.
3. Do your photos and attributes meet the buyer apps’ bar?
Buyer apps also enforce listing-quality rules from ONDC’s seller guidelines. Products that miss the mandatory bar are not shown lower. They are dropped.
The rules that catch most small sellers:
| Rule | What buyer apps expect |
|---|---|
| Photos | At least 4 images, including a clear front AND back of the pack |
| Food products | The FSSAI licence number must be readable on the product image itself |
| Products under quality-control orders (electronics, toys, some appliances) | The BIS/ISI mark visible as an image |
| Attributes | Every “mandatory” attribute for your category filled — a missing one can drop the whole product |
One useful right you have: ONDC network policy (rule 2.3.15) lets a seller platform demand each buyer app’s mandatory-attribute list. If a specific app is not showing your products, your Seller App can ask that app, in writing, what exactly it requires. Ask your platform to use that right.
Check it: Count the images on your weakest listing. If it is 1 blurry phone photo of the front, that listing is likely invisible on the stricter apps, whatever your dashboard says.
4. Has the buyer app even crawled your catalog yet?
This one is about patience, and it is the most common false alarm.
Buyer apps do not watch your catalog live. They crawl seller catalogs on their own schedule, and in our logs those crawls cluster late at night, roughly between 1 AM and 3 AM. On one typical night we counted 455 catalog copies delivered to buyer apps, most of them in that late-night window. After an app crawls you, your products typically appear on its storefront within 4 to 30 minutes.
There is also a rule buried in the network contract that surprises everyone: the small “incremental” updates that flow during the day cannot introduce a brand-new shop. A buyer app must do a full crawl before your shop exists for it at all. So:
- New shop, listed today at 4 PM, not visible at 6 PM? Normal. Wait for tonight’s crawl window. Check tomorrow morning.
- New product added to an already-visible shop? Usually faster, but the same night-crawl logic can apply per app.
- Still nothing after 2–3 nights? Now it is not the clock. Go back to filters 1, 2, 3 — or ask your platform to escalate to the buyer app.
📊 When buyer apps actually pick up your catalog
Afternoon
You add products
Nothing visible yet — normal
1 AM – 3 AM
Buyer apps crawl catalogs
455 copies in one night
Morning
Products appear
4–30 min after each crawl
5. Are your settings actually reaching the network?
Here is a check almost no seller does: compare what a buyer app says about your shop with what your settings say.
On the wire, we have seen the gap with our own eyes. A live storefront advertised “easy 3-day returns” for a seller whose returns setting was OFF. We have seen cash-on-delivery offered on a storefront and then refused at the final confirmation step, which means the buyer’s order dies at the last moment. Settings can exist on a dashboard and still never reach the catalog that buyer apps read.
Why does this hide listings? Because wrong promises create failed orders and buyer complaints, and buyer apps derank or drop sellers who cause them. A COD order that always fails at confirm looks, from the buyer app’s side, like a broken seller.
Check it: Find your own shop on any buyer app (search your shop name or products). Read your own storefront card like a buyer: returns text, cancellation text, COD availability, delivery promise. If any line does not match what you set, report that exact line to your seller platform and ask them to verify it on the wire. A good platform can check the actual catalog payload in minutes.
6. Is incomplete data silently removing your statutory blocks?
Filter 2 was about Legal Metrology. This is the same principle applied to everything statutory: FSSAI details for food, veg/non-veg marks, packer information, expiry-related fields.
The principle: an honest platform never fabricates statutory data. Incomplete data means the block is omitted, and Rule 2.3.8 means omitted blocks can get the product hidden. The dangerous part is the silence — your product list can look perfectly fine while a chunk of your catalog goes out legally naked night after night. In Seller A’s case that silence lasted a full week and cost essentially all orders.
Check it: Ask your seller platform one direct question: “Which of my products are going out with missing statutory information, and which fields are missing?” The platform can see this; the answer exists in their data. On Kaarobari, this check runs on every product automatically and shows a gap badge on the exact item, because we learned the hard way — with Seller A — that a rule the seller cannot see is a trap, not a rule.
📷 How a statutory gap shows up on the product list
Mango pickle 250g
Listing complete ✓Papad 200g
⚠ Missing: packer address, packing monthThe 6-point check, in one table
Do these in order. Most invisibility cases end at step 1, 2 or 4.
| # | Check | Where | Fixed by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delivery radius matches your real market | Your dashboard, delivery settings | You, 1 minute |
| 2 | Label declaration complete on EVERY packaged product | Product details: maker name, address, net qty, MRP, packing month/year | You, per product |
| 3 | ≥4 photos incl. front+back; FSSAI readable on image | Each product's images | You + a phone camera |
| 4 | Waited at least 1-2 nights after listing (crawls run ~1-3 AM) | Calendar | Patience |
| 5 | Storefront text matches your settings (returns, COD) | Find your shop on a buyer app, read your own card | Your platform verifies the wire |
| 6 | No product shipping without statutory blocks | Ask your platform for the gap list | You fill gaps, platform confirms |
Questions sellers ask us
My dashboard shows everything is fine. So the buyer app is cheating me?+−
Sahi sawaal, and usually no. In every case we have debugged, the buyer app was applying a written rule (radius, Rule 2.3.8, mandatory attributes) to data we had sent. The rules simply act silently. Work the 6 checks first. Network policy (rule 2.3.3(k)) also requires buyer apps to show all valid results without discrimination, so once your data is clean, you have standing to escalate.
I fixed my products today. When will they show?+−
Expect tonight's crawl window, roughly 1-3 AM, then 4 to 30 minutes after each app's crawl. Seller A's fix went from 1-of-29 complete to 29-of-29 on the very next push. Check in the morning, not in the next five minutes.
How do I even see my own shop as a buyer?+−
Install any ONDC buyer app, set the delivery address inside your own delivery radius (this matters — outside the radius you will not find yourself either), and search your shop or product name. Reading your own storefront once a month is the cheapest audit you will ever do.
Can Kaarobari check all 6 for my shop?+−
Yes. This checklist is built into how we onboard sellers on the ONDC Network — radius set with intent, statutory gaps flagged per product, and wire checks when something looks off. Costs are simple: no monthly fee, no listing fee, 2% only on delivered orders.
Stuck on any document? Our team gets it done on a call — no charge
We have a dedicated team that guides you step-by-step on a call and gets every document made — Udyam, GST enrolment, FSSAI, all of it. And not just documents: from signup to your shop going live on the ONDC Network to your first delivered order — support at every step, completely free. No fees, no agent costs.
Mon–Sat, 10am–7pm. Hindi and English both work.
Read next
Sources
- ONDC Network Policy, Chapter 2 — rules 2.3.3(k), 2.3.8, 2.3.15 (resources.ondc.org)
- Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules — declaration requirements for e-commerce
- ONDC seller onboarding guidelines — image and mandatory-attribute requirements
- Order and catalog data: Kaarobari production logs, July–August 2026 (first-party data; sellers anonymised, buyer applications not named by policy)