Digital Public Infrastructure in India: Emerging Trends in the Sector with Reference to the "Open Network for Digital Commerce" Platform

Abstract

Digital Public Infrastructure is now acknowledged as a significant contributor to the 4th industrial revolution and an essential requirement to a nation’s economic growth. Even if economic activities depend more and more on digital public infrastructure, emerging economies find it difficult to develop a strong digital public infrastructure because of low affordability index and lack of cooperation amongst different stakeholders.

The “Open Network for Digital Commerce” (ONDC) is an open-protocol digital platform that will enable local businesses in all economic sectors such as auto, grocery, restaurants, beverages, bookings for different services, hospitality, and tourism to be recognized and searchable by websites and applications. This digital tool aims to break up the monopoly of large companies, provide new opportunities, and support small businesses, micro, small, and medium-sized organizations by giving them access to top-tier platforms.1

With the global economy becoming increasingly digital, companies are looking for creative methods to engage with customers. The “ONDC” is a new network that aims to facilitate “digital transactions” between businesses of all sizes by giving them a platform to communicate with one another. The internet has completely changed how people interact and trade in recent years. With the popularity of online shopping growing, it is critical for companies to stay competitive to have a strong digital infrastructure. Digital commerce conducted online is flourishing and growing quickly. Traders, especially smaller ones, would be allowed to store their data on ONDC in order to contact customers and establish credit history.2

Additionally, platforms would be specifically created to comply with the “Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023” and the “Information Technology Act, 2000”. Regardless of the platform or the application that they are using, ONDC hopes to enable digital connections and business transactions between customers and sellers via an open network (ON).3