Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Kerala Government’s Transport Department initiative to create an interoperable public transport network, Kochi Open Mobility Network (KOMN) will now expand to the whole state of Kerala through its integration with the central government’s e-commerce platform, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). The development is a part of the larger initiative to bring diverse aspects of commerce including mobility under the roof of ONDC.
The integration will allow users on the ONDC platform to buy mobility in addition to other goods and services such as grocery items and food and beverages.
The ONDC and KOMN tie-up will make the digital discoverability for all transport operators and their services easier. The development is a part of the larger initiative to bring diverse aspects of commerce including mobility under the roof of ONDC.
Kerala Open Mobility Network was launched on November 4 in Kochi and the event was inaugurated by the union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri.
“The launch of the Kerala Open Mobility Network as a part of ONDC takes us one step closer to our goal of democratizing the digital ecosystem and being a single point of access for various services,” said T. Koshy, MD and CEO, ONDC.
He added that the state government will eventually enable access to various mobility services with the support of the Transport Department.
“This will then give the people of Kerala more choices of transport, and at the same time, the service providers will also benefit from the easy and wide discoverability of their services.” said Koshy, adding that it will further expand the open mobility networks across the country.
KOMN was implemented under the Kochi Metropolitan Transport Authority (KMTA), with the support of FIDE (erstwhile Beckn) Foundation.
The rationale of the project is to establish an open network of transport services in Kerala, as per the official release. Since its launch in 2021, the network has combined several taxi associations and Kochi metro booking systems into an integrated solution on a single network, using the open-source Beckn Protocols, an underlying protocol of ONDC.
Launched in April 2022, the government’s ONDC project, which is being hailed as UPI for commerce, will enable small merchants across the country to access digital technology and get on-par with big e-commerce players.