Technology for MSMEs: The government’s thought to make the e-commerce ecosystem open supply, which implies enabling sellers to be discoverable across many platforms for a wider attain to prospects rather of readily available to prospects on only one distinct e-commerce platform, will aid democratize digital commerce a great deal like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), according to authorities. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) on Monday, by means of an order, announced an Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to address the situation of digital monopolies and “digitize the entire value chain, standardize operations, promote inclusion of suppliers, derive efficiencies in logistics and enhance value for consumers,” the official statement had mentioned. Essentially, what this would do is turn e-commerce from its existing kind into an open digital infrastructure, which is very scalable for sellers and prospects to connect with every other, with no the barrier of producing an work of switching among two or more marketplaces for a distinct item.
“When you are opting for e-commerce, you have to go to various platforms to trade as it is not seamless for you to shift from one marketplace to another and be visible to multiple people at the same time. In some ways what UPI did to the banking capabilities for people as everybody uses the same protocol to seamlessly transact real-time, ONDC is a similar case as far as commerce is concerned. So we are trying to work on it so that one can trade with anybody and create visibility for his/her product,” Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India told TheSpuzz Online.
Rajagopalan is portion of a nine-member advisory council constituted by the Ministry of Commerce to advise the government on how to “design and accelerate adoption of ONDC,” the government had mentioned. The other eight members integrated R.S. Sharma, CEO, National Health Authority, Nandan Nilekani, Non-executive Chairman, Infosys, Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary-General, CAIT, Adil Zainulbhai, Chairman, QCI and Capacity Building Commission, Anjali Bansal, Founder & Chairperson, Avaana Capital, Arvind Gupta, Co-founder & Head, Digital India Foundation, Dilip Asbe, MD & CEO, NPCI, and Suresh Sethi, MD & CEO, NSDL.
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The project to integrate e-commerce platforms by means of a network based on open-supply technologies independent of any single or special e-commerce platform has been tasked to the Quality Council of India. So, how it may possibly work? “Let’s say I’m a small retailer and want to showcase my products to multiple platforms for which I have to currently work with individual platforms or use various methods to showcase products. With ONDC, it is possible you can expose products on various platforms at the same time. If someone is searching let’s say a white shirt, the network can show you multiple sellers with the same product because everybody is using an easily understandable protocol of ONDC. So, retailers would benefit from visibility, reach, ability to connect with customers faster and in a much cheaper way,” added Rajagopalan.
The move by the government indicates supplying an open network protocol that enables place-conscious regional commerce across industries to be found and engaged by any network-enabled application. According to traders’ body CAIT, when the terms of reference for the Council are however to be notified, ONDC appeared to go beyond the existing platform-centric digital commerce model exactly where the purchaser and seller should use the identical platform to do a company transaction. On ONDC, purchasers and sellers may well transact irrespective of the reality that they are attached to one particular e-commerce portal. Presumably, it will be like UPI for payments, IMAP/SMTP protocols for emails, and HTTP for information communication and browsing on the World Wide Web, the body added.
“This will be most impactful for MSMEs and small traders looking to unlock value and scale their operations through the digital commerce space. This will be a first-of-its-kind initiative in the world to create a level playing field for digital commerce at the scale of a country like India,” mentioned Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, CAIT.