Will the launch of ONDC Impact e-Retailers’ Occupancy?

The sprawling wave of eCommerce growth into the Indian eCommerce space has assumed to have unparalleled growth potentials, large enough to change the focus of the eCommerce ecosystem in the country. The Indian government is all set to launch The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative to streamline and equate opportunities for all small and large players. The new concept aims at democratizing the Indian eCommerce space by creating a level-playing field for all the players in the market. Through the program, the government is eyeing to promote open networks for all aspects of exchanging goods and services over digital networks.

Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary-General, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and a delegate member of the ONDC advisory council to the government, comments, “Currently, a buyer can purchase products from one connected portal and for buying from other portals he or she might have to search another portal. The ONDC network gives the buyer freedom to buy goods or services from any company without making several accounts on any particular e-Commerce portal.”

Government challenges Amazon and Flipkart with ONDC. The launch of ONDC will strengthen all online businesses to gain much-needed visibility and fair chances for better growth opportunities, says Akash Gehani, COO & Co-founder, online selling platform Instamojo.

According to Khandelwal, over 4,000 small and big e-commerce companies in India, along with 500 logistics companies deliver goods from various portals to customers, serve over 20,000 companies that offer services through e-commerce, including travel, hotels, etc.

“With the launch of ONDC, all of them are needed to register according to the draft rules made for e-commerce. “The main objective of ONDC is to protect the policies and rules of the government while laying down a strong monitoring entity for the development in the e-commerce business,” he added.

According to Punit Sindhwani, CEO, Paxcom, “The new platform came into existence in response to the concerns shown by the market bodies, merchants and sellers for the growing shares of the large market players in the growing Indian eCommerce market. The existence of an open network would impact the private incumbents and their sellers onboard.” His company provides eCommerce business strategy solutions currently.

Vijeta Soni, Co-Founder & CEO, Sciative Solutions, an aspiring pricing firm, expressed her concerns by adding that there will be ground-level challenges in implementing ONDC structure such as genuinity of the seller, examining the delivering experience of buyers, or delivery of the rightful products as shown online.

“Platforms, like Amazon, Flipkart and others put a huge sum of money to keep track of these on their platforms.”

Dilli Babu Nandarapu, Founder & CEO of, ShopConnect, has a shopper perspective by adding that the initiative will see more customers onboarding as the basic complexities such as e-KYC, GST, etc. will be taken care of by ONDC platform gateways.

“I hope that ONDC will provide a unified product catalog and network of suppliers, sellers, and buyers to choose their products easily while helping in identifying and reaching out to the stakeholders in an integrated manner,” said Nandarapu.

Nandan Nilekani, in his earlier interaction, said,” The Open Network for Digital Commerce is the answer to all the critical revolution and disruption in the country since India is soon going to be a trillion dollar retail economy by growing faster.

Interestingly, eCommerce leading players such as Flipkart, Amazon, Nykaa either did not comment on the new development.