Can you tell me about the Nandan Nilekani project ONDC that the government wants to use to check practices of Amazon and Flipkart?

The good thing about a project undertaken and led by the former CEO of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, is that you can be sure that it is going to be significant. After all, he was the man who launched the Aadhar in India for financial inclusion. ONDC has larger business implications as it will empower millions of small traders in India to take on big digital giants like Amazon and Wal-Mart (which is the owner of Flipkart).

Even as the ecommerce market builds up towards $200 billion by 2026, there have been a slew of complaints from traders and other small businesses about the predatory tactics used by the likes of Amazon and Flipkart. These include arm twisting, favouring sellers, surge pricing, flash sale etc. ONDC will keep a check on these practices by launching in 5 cities to begin with viz. Delhi, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Bhopal and Shillong.

What is that ONDC will do? Today, if you have to buy a product online, you automatically go to an ecommerce website like Amazon or Flipkart. ONDC will dispense with that need. Remember, ONDC is an agnostic central platform where all the large ecommerce offerings and buyers can list. The trader have a choice and they can execute online transactions without dealing with the big digital names.

ONDC is meant to create a level playing field for smaller traders on the selling side and the procurement side. ONDC enables buyers and sellers to transact irrespective of where they are registered. In short, ONDC allows democratization of digital commerce. ONDC actually will shift digital commerce to an open network. This makes it easier and cheaper for everyone to participate and make it a true blue digital platform.