ONDC may remove e-commerce firms not joining with main app

Piyush Goyal said by introducing new apps e-commerce giants are taking the benefit of ONDC by availing of the sellers

The government-promoted Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) may remove the e-commerce firms which don’t join the network through their main apps, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday.

Speaking at ‘Enabling Bharat 2.0’ workshop, Goyal asked ONDC’s chief executive officer T Koshy to “exclude those e-commerce platforms which are not coming to the network with their main platforms.”

“Some are building ONDC-specific platforms. That’s not our aim,” the minister said.

Earlier this month, PhonePe launched an ONDC-specific app called Pincode. The app was launched in Bengaluru on April 4. It is currently available in Bengaluru but Walmart-owned PhonePe plans to expand Pincode app to other cities as well.

Goyal said by introducing new apps e-commerce giants are taking the benefit of ONDC by availing of the sellers. “But you are not giving your consumer base the benefit of choice of buying from any of the sellers,” he said.

Also Read | ONDC will help small retail survive onslaught of large tech-based e-com firms: Piyush Goyal

The minister invited all e-commerce players to join the ONDC platform.

“We would like to invite everybody to be part of this journey in a free and fair manner and nobody will be discriminated against. It is open to all. ONDC is open for business,” he added.

ONDC seeks to democratise e-commerce by moving it from a platform-centric model to an open-network. It enables sellers and buyers to be digitally visible and transact through an open network, regardless of what platform or application they use.

ONDC aims to provide a level-playing field that would help small e-commerce players expand their business and thus reduce the dominance of industry giants like Amazon and Flipkart.

He said monolithic e-commerce platforms will never be able to provide the services of the kind that a network of platforms like ONDC can offer.

Goyal noted that ONDC was born when the e-commerce sector was grappling with multiple challenges and small businesses were under threat.