Technology for MSMEs: Opening up India’s current platform-centric e-commerce market, wherein buyers and sellers are required to be on a common platform for a transaction, to a network-centric model for buyers and sellers to transact irrespective of the platforms they use, will help small enterprises to become large, according to T Koshy, managing director and chief executive officer, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).
Addressing the second edition of Financial Express Digital’s ScaleUp Summit in Delhi last month, Koshy said one of the essential requirements for businesses especially micro and small enterprises (MSEs) to scale up and become large businesses is market access.
“Now (with ONDC) market access can be enhanced on your own terms and conditions. Similar to the offline market where you can sell your products either through your own stores, via supermarkets or through a chain of small merchant stores, ONDC provides you with equal opportunity to connect with relevant buyers,” he said.
ONDC hosts multiple participants such as buyers, sellers, logistics companies, etc. Currently, multiple companies are live on the network, for instance, Digiit, GoFrugal, Ushop, Growth Falcons etc., as sellers while Paytm, PhonePe, Craftsvilla etc., are registered as buyers. When a shopper searches for a product on any of the buyers’ apps such as Paytm, the ONDC platform connects him/her to listed sellers that show up merchants from where the shopper can purchase the product.
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“Many seller platforms are live and many are in the pipeline. Currently, 300-400 seller platforms are under different stages (of integration with ONDC network),” said Koshy. In September 2022, ONDC opened its network to customers in Bengaluru to place orders in two categories viz., groceries and restaurants through buyer apps participating on the ONDC network.
ONDC is expected to get an initial set of B2B sellers and buyers on the network in a month’s time while other categories such as fashion, beauty, electronics, consumer durables and services like financial products and mobility (for which a pilot is already running) like Ola and Uber will become fully active in next four-five months, said Koshy.