How ONDC Is Integrating Technology to Democratize E-Commerce
Nitin Mishra of ONDC on Evolution of Digital Commerce and Its Future Implications
India has the world's third-largest online shopper population, trailing China and the U.S. Despite this, its e-retail penetration remains modest, at just 4.3%. In a bid to enhance this figure and involve sellers of all sizes and types, the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was established as a Section-8 company in 2021.
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The organization aims to elevate India's e-commerce penetration to 25% of consumer transactions within the next two years. In five years, ONDC aspires to onboard 900 million buyers and 1.2 million sellers onto its shared network, achieving a gross merchandise value of $48 billion.
To realize its mission, ONDC has launched protocols that will serve as the foundation for creating a public digital infrastructure in the form of open registries and open network gateways. This approach grants providers and consumers the flexibility to utilize compatible applications of their choice for information exchange and transactional activities on the ONDC platform.
"ONDC is a futuristic initiative that will revolutionize digital commerce. We are building a network and a protocol that will facilitate seamless interaction between disparate platforms," said Nitin Mishra, CTO, ONDC. "This is a platform where cognitive technologies will do the heavy lifting. We aim to implement a dynamic pricing model, digitized inventory management and optimize the delivery cost to help reduce cost of doing business."
In an exclusive video interview with ISMG, Mishra discussed:
- The importance of standards and protocols in enabling large-scale digital commerce;
- Interoperability challenges of a platform;
- API security issues in a decentralized and open-standards-based platform.
Mishra is a result-oriented technology leader with more than 25 years of experience. Prior to ONCD, he led the technology vertical at GSTN and played a key role in the successful rollout of GST technology platform in India. He has successfully driven key initiatives in banking and finance, EDA, and systems integration.
