E-Commerce Majors Amazon, Flipkart Welcome to Join Network, Says ONDC Head

E-commerce majors such as Amazon and Flipkart have been invited to join India's digital public infrastructure Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), said the network's Chief Executive Officer T Koshi.

In an interaction with ANI, Koshi said it invited them and they were welcome to the network.

"They are looking at (ONDC) seriously and we believe that whenever they feel comfortable with respect to their current scale and size of the operation and their system, they will seriously look at it. But as of now, they have not integrated. They made some statements with respect to their participation and also their intent," Koshi told ANI.

ONDC is a non-profit company established by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) to develop open e-commerce.

Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is aimed at promoting open source networks for all to exchange goods and services on the internet, and most importantly it is independent of any specific platform.

Incorporated on December 31, 2021, ONDC goes beyond the current platform-centric digital commerce model where the buyer and seller have to use the same platform or application to be digitally visible and do a business transaction.

India has developed some of the finest digital public goods infrastructure which could change lives the world over, and the next in line could be its Open Network for Digital Commerce which currently is in its nascent stage of adoption. India has taken the path of building the public digital infrastructure for serving citizens and UPI, and Jan Dhan, Aadhar and CoWin are some of examples.

ONDC operations started in January and had just 40 transactions per day which have now peaked upwards of 30,000 for goods and 50,000 for services.

He added the platform is attracting interest from both big players to small merchants.

"We're seeing that now that we have much more control on the terms and conditions of the transaction, and much better pricing and costing in this network. They have started announcing many special schemes for the customers that they come to open networks for digital commerce. We believe that kind of trend will start happening in the coming months where they realize the freedom this democratization is providing to the vendors."

Currently, grocery and food items merchants are mostly part of it, but beauty, fashion, personal care products, and electronics, among others, are gradually joining in and going live on the platform.