Now, we are all aware how the Indian ecommerce scene is dominated by Amazon and Flipkart. Now, these ecommerce giants use b2c online business model and help businesses consumers make purchases or sell things online. For using the technologies and processes, these companies charge a certain amount from the retailers.
There is a big news for the small retailers in the Indian scenario with the launch of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the government-backed open network e-commerce platform.
ONDC Will Cost a Quarter as compared to Other Platforms
The newly launched ecom platform will only cost small retailers a quarter of what they pay to e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.
As compared to the 18-40% that they pay to Amazon and Flipkart, the small retailers can access the ONDC platform at 8-10% of the selling price of products as per the government sources.
A commerce ministry official, however, said that it is the market that would dictate the fee/commission charged on the platform and not the government.
The official said that “We have no intention of fixing any cap on commission charged by the platform, it would be purely decided by the market forces”.
The official explained that for any existing e-commerce platforms like Flipkart or Amazon to be part of the ONDC they will have to bring both their sellers and buyers on the platform.
Unlike e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, wherein both buyers and sellers platforms are hosted together, the ONDC platform will host buyer and seller apps separately.
So far now, none of the top e-commerce platforms have evinced any interest so far for on boarding on ONDC.
ONDC’s Beta Testing in Bengaluru
On Friday, ONDC started its beta testing process with small retailers across 16 pin codes in Bengaluru.
Based on open specifications, ONDC will boost small merchant digitisation and e-commerce scale and will reduce the dominance of big players such as Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart.
It is an initiative of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Three buyers apps – Paytm, Spicemoney and Mystore – were on the platform on the first day of the beta testing. As many as 11 seller apps, which basically are aggregators of small retailers and kirana stores, also integrated with the system on the first day.
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