The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) launched by the Indian government is expected to perform better in the B2C ecommerce space than in the B2B segment, according to Ankur Pahwa, managing partner of venture capital firm PeerCapital, and Dinesh Agarwal, CEO and founder of IndiaMART. ONDC is an open network designed to help small businesses participate in the Indian ecommerce ecosystem by unbundling existing closed networks of digital commerce.
While major players across ecommerce, logistics, and payments ecosystems have already integrated with the platform, experts believe ONDC may not see the same traction in the B2B segment as it is seeing in the B2C space. Asish Mohapatra, cofounder and CEO of OfBusiness and Oxyzo, suggests that a private player may build a faster and easier substitute of ONDC. However, components of the India Stack, such as the cross-border payments system, may have a bigger impact, according to Pahwa. India Stack is a set of open APIs and digital public products that covers identity, payments, and more, and the Indian government has offered it to other countries to help them provide digital services to their citizens. In February 2023, India completed the cross-border linkage between its UPI and Singapore’s PayNow, and NPCI is in talks with multiple other countries for UPI adoption.