You must have heard about the initiative from the Indian Government to make e-commerce accessible for all with the launch of its new platform named Open Network for Digital Commerce which is widely known as ONDC. This is not the first time that the Indian Government is trying something of this magnitude as it has already done so with the launch of UPI which has been very successful and is being replicated in various countries around the world. At the moment, since its inception, ONDC was only accepting direct-to-customer transactions which meant that startups and companies had to come on-board and sell their products and also take care of the delivery. With the launch of business-to-business transactions, things will be different.
T Koshy, CEO of ONDC, said, “One of the biggest challenges in digital commerce is even if you help enterprises to digitize, how do we help them to reach across the market? Each of them has to have a separate buying application or a portal they use to call. So now, we are trying to create a standard, which will make all these things a big possibility,” and added, “B2B has its own nuances because the buyers are different, their priorities are different”. “A pure contractual relationship between the buyer and seller. Everything is different, and there will be some negotiation.”
With the launch of B2B on ONDC, it is revealed that “Rapidor, a business automation platform based in Kerala, and SignCatch, a SaaS payments startup based in New Delhi, have come on the network to start B2B transactions between them”. Also, it has been noted that “both startups conducted about 160 cross-transactions on the open network”. ONDC’s CEO also mentioned that their “open e-commerce network was making about 50,000 daily transactions related to groceries and food deliveries. It expects to manage 100,000 daily transactions in the next few months”. It is worth noting that apps based on ONDC have only been launched in few cities of India such as Bengaluru and others. It can be tested thoroughly once there is a wider rollout and if it can challenge the likes of Swiggy and Zomato in the country or not.
