Maintaining trust, governance key for digital ecommerce ecosystem: ONDC CEO

Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) CEO T. Koshy on Wednesday said that maintaining governance and trust building is the key for the digital commerce ecosystem in the country and ONDC has achieved this task. Addressing the Global Fintech Fest 2023 (GFF 2023) here with Noopur Chaturvedi, CEO, NPCI Bharat BillPay Limited and Suresh Sethi, MD and CEO, Protean eGov Technologies, Koshy emphasised that ONDC comes in as a network administrator.

“We facilitate a lot more transparency on how network participants connect with each other. At ONDC, we have put together certain mechanisms that every participant has to adhere to, irrespective of their size. Our legally binding network participant agreement is watertight and has to be signed by each partner registering on our platform,” he told the gathering.

The 'Network Policies', which are essentially the rules of participation for all ecosystem players, are continuously evolved collaboratively with representatives of the ecosystem players are an inherent component of the Network Participant Agreement at ONDC.

“Finally, the buyers and sellers agree on terms and conditions for the transaction through a digitally signed contract,” Koshy added.

Sethi said that when building for ONDC, two aspects were considered.

“The Gateway and the system are for reconciliation and settlement. Since ONDC was democratising digital commerce, privacy and trust by design and equal access was a priority,” he said.
Giving a tough fight to Zomato-Swiggy dominance in the online food delivery market, the ONDC, an initiative of the government, now has 50,000 live restaurants for placing online orders on the Open Network, across 172 cities.

ONDC aims to double the restaurant count by the end of 2023. Consumers can order food online on the ONDC Network via Buyer Apps including Paytm, Pincode, Magicpin, Mystore among others.