Decoded: How ONDC plans to level e-commerce playing field in India

The open network concept will not be restricted to the retail sector but will extend to mobility, food delivery, travel, among others

On Friday, the government launched a pilot of its ambitious Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative, which aims to democratise e-commerce and check the dominance of US-based players such as Amazon and Walmart. The pilot was launched in five cities. ONDC intends to transform the e-commerce space the way the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) did for India’s digital payments system. Let’s find out how it plans to achieve this.

What is ONDC and how will it work?

ONDC will work on the principle of open network, where a buyer and a seller don’t have to be on the same