Major Venture Capital (VC) firms including the Tokyo-based multinational conglomerate firm, SoftBank Group Corp, and Sequoia Capital India Advisors Private Limited, have recommended their portfolio companies integrate with the Indian Government’s digital commerce company, Open Network for Digital Commerce, or ONDC.
The Open Network for Digital Commerce team and the IVCA (Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association) not so long ago had a meeting to discuss how businesses could participate in the ONDC network.
T Koshy, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ONDC, stated that their team is in contact with several significant investors who are interested in learning how the ONDC network will function, impact, and reshape India’s eCommerce sector.
Shireesh Joshi, who is the Chief Business Officer (CBO) of ONDC, stated that from their team’s point of view, they interact with people on an individual basis and with organizations. It is a good chance to interact with the Venture Capital community, which is made up of forward-thinking people. In a recent discussion that took place, the topics included how ONDC came to be, the way it works, and its design.
According to an analysis made by Jefferies, which is an equity research company, ONDC has more complicated execution challenges to work through, in comparison to launching the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system for instant real-time online payments.
The added benefits that were provided by the UPI system were a strong argument in favour of its adoption, which might not be the same situation for ONDC. To put it mildly, the service levels provided by eCommerce companies, such as Amazon.com Inc, are up to par for the majority of people at present. The value proposition of ONDC must be more compelling to entice customers into shifting to its platform.
ONDC is aiming to expand in India and have its presence in an additional 75 cities, as well as wants to include various other product categories such as home goods, electronics and clothing. According to reports, several players intend to participate on both the buyer and seller side of the network, and about 150 applications will be integrating with it shortly.
