Taking inspiration from population scale solutions such as the UPI, IMAP/SMTP (email protocols), HTTP (protocols for data communication and browsing), etc., ‘Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)’ was envisioned to revolutionize digital commerce.
In a nutshell it is open network for digital commerce it's open which means anyone can join it's a network it's not an application it's not a website you can go to it's not some platform where you know you log in it's a network and it's for digital commerce it's for anything which you want to digitally sell from one place to another one person to another it's primarily a P2P network which means it's person to person but it's B2B also you know business to business when you say P2P primarily here it's it basically connects one point to another point.
It's an initiative by Indian government like it has a full force of the government. The participation in ONDC the giants like google, even banks like ICICI it is umbrella for organization like big corporate those kind of stuff so so it's it's something which has the blessing of a lot of big giants not only the government but even private people.
You might have seen a lot of buzz in uh in media about ONDC you ITC and unilever that were in talks with ondc google in talks dunzo, phone pe, google pay, reliance, amazon, flipkart, paytm you name it everyone in India who is you know associative e-commerce or even not associated with e-commerce is part of ONDC and that is what you know is exciting about this network.
Since you see google and reliance you think this is for the big guys but actually this is for the small guys it's for the smallest seller in the neighborhood, it's a smallest kirana shop in the neighborhood. Everyone is a participant, it's a open network so everyone can participate.
What is the impact of ONDC?
This is not just my view it's a view of a lot of people and and a lot of policy makers that ONDC is going to be the primary channel of online sales in coming decade which means that this channel is probably going to be the best biggest e-commerce channel in India in this coming decade.
The website you see but most of the website when you see has three layers you know storefront for buyers where your customers come then there's a platform on which the website is built and then there's suppliers. Platform basically connects through a storefront your buyers and suppliers and then supplier and there's value in each of these places right supplier has value because they bring products and storefront has value which means that they bring customers. They interact either they use the search on one storefront they use filters, cart, check out, and payment that's what happens on storefront right and platform has value because it connects the the supplier and the and the customers the logic is there right and that has value and this value today is there with single player like flipkart or amazon because they control everything all these three layers.
What ONDC is doing it's basically breaking this that you know supplier platform and storefront they're literally breaking these three apart. On one side they'll be seller app and on other side there'll be buyer apps the job of buyer apps is to get orders. These buyer apps can be your banks telcos, google pay and and phone pe kind of apps. The seller apps are primarily who are sellers who are local kirana shops your handicraft producers, people who have a shop nearby a neighborhood shop like a fashion retail shop brands.
Source: - ONDC Strategy Paper
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