Big e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart have been invited to join India’s Open Digital Public Infrastructure Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), chief executive officer of the network T Koshi said.
In an interaction with ANI, Koshi said that he invited them and they were welcome to the network.
“They’re looking at (ONDC) seriously and we think as long as they’re comfortable with their current scale and size of the operation and their system, they’ll look at it seriously. But as of now, they haven’t integrated. They made some statements with regarding their participation and also their intention,” Koshi told ANI.
ONDC is a non-profit company created by the Department for the Promotion of Industry and Domestic Trade (DPIIT) to develop open electronic commerce.
The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) aims to promote open source networks for everyone to exchange goods and services on the Internet, and most importantly, it is independent of any specific platform.
Incorporated on December 31, 2021, the ONDC goes beyond the current platform-centric digital commerce model in which the buyer and seller have to use the same platform or application to be digitally visible and carry out a commercial transaction.
India has developed some of the best infrastructure for digital public goods that could change lives around the world, and next in line could be its Open Network for Digital Commerce, which is currently in its early adoption stage. India has taken the path of building the public digital infrastructure to serve the citizens and UPI, and Jan Dhan, Aadhar and CoWin are some examples.
ONDC operations started in January and had only 40 transactions per day which have now peaked at 30,000 for goods and 50,000 for services.
He added that the platform is attracting interest from both big players and small traders.
“We are seeing that now that we have a lot more control over the terms and conditions of the transaction, and much better prices and costs on this network. They have started to announce a lot of special schemes for customers coming to open networks for digital.” We think that kind of trend will start to happen in the next few months where they realize the freedom that this democratization is bringing to sellers.”
Currently, grocery and food merchants are mostly a part of it, but beauty, fashion, personal care products, and electronics, among others, are gradually joining and rolling out on the platform.