The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is not meant to “to create a price war,” but to “help small enterprises to get” to a threshold in digital commerce, the network’s Chief Executive Officer Thampy Koshy told reporters on May 11. ONDC is a government-backed modular network for e-commerce, food and grocery delivery, and cabs. ONDC activity has grown dramatically — partly on the back of incentives it has provided to participants. India Post may soon join the network, which would bring one of the world’s largest logistics systems on board.
In January, Mr. Koshy said, “We had 800 merchants, fifty transactions a day, and twenty network participants.” Network participants are the term for tech firms that provide an app to access or sell through ONDC. “By March end, with mobility, retail and food delivery, we had 1,000 orders a day. By April end, we had 10,000 a day.” And at present, Mr. Koshy said, ONDC was clocking over 25,000 orders a day.
ONDC was launched to curb “potential rent seeking” behaviour from top e-commerce platforms in retail, food delivery and cab aggregation, and leave each part of the value chain, from cataloguing orders to actually delivering them, to different players. Having it all be done by one platform “there is inefficiency that’s created,” Mr. Koshy said.
