DPIIT Secretary: Dynamic pricing, cost optimisation key to ONDC

🔴 The ONDC is aimed at providing an alternative to proprietary e-commerce platforms, as well as reducing the cost of doing business.

By: ENS Economic Bureau

New Delhi | January 15, 2022 03:04 AM IST

3 min read

Open Network for Digital Commerce ONDC, e-commerce platforms, Dynamic pricing, inventory management, cost optimisation, Business news, Indian express business news, Indian express, Indian express news, Current Affairs

The government has set up an advisory council to decide on the steps required to design and accelerate adoption of ONDC.

Dynamic pricing, inventory management and optimisation of delivery cost will be key to the success of the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative of the government, a senior official said on Friday.

The ONDC is aimed at providing an alternative to proprietary e-commerce platforms, as well as reducing the cost of doing business.

“Three important things in ONDC (are) dynamic pricing, inventory management, and optimisation of delivery cost. All these facilities will actually reduce the cost of doing business for everybody,” said Anurag Jain, Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), during the launch of ONDC national rollout strategy ‘Reimagining the Future of Digital Commerce with ONDC’.

Jain noted that only larger players had thus far been able to take advantage of e-commerce.

Anil Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, DPIIT, said the ONDC would standardise operations such cataloguing, inventory management, order management, and order fulfilment and allow small businesses to use “any compatible ONDC app instead of being governed by specific platform-centric policies.”

“So what happens, small businesses would be able to use any compatible ONDC app instead of being governed by specific platform-centric policies and this opens up multiple options to small businesses to be discoverable over the network and conduct their businesses,” Agrawal added.

The government has set up an advisory council, which includes Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and National Health Authority Chief Executive Officer RS Sharma, to decide on the steps required to design and accelerate adoption of ONDC.

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Nilekani said ONDC would expand the e-commerce market significantly. “I would recommend that everybody get onboard now and participate in the most exciting business transformation happening in the world.”

He further said that the protocols being designed for ONDC were “best in class” and would allow a wide set of participants to inter-operate and contribute.

ONDC, he said, will also have a large number of public spirited shareholders. “I am told that there is an enormous interest in investing in ONDC.” Nilekani said India will have a trillion dollar retail economy and even if 10-20 per cent of that goes online, “we are talking” about $100-200 billion doing online.

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