Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) announced on June 5 the launch of business-to-business (B2B) transactions on the government-backed interoperable e-commerce network.
While the first B2B transaction on the network took place on May 21 at a gathering of network participants (NPs) in Bengaluru, two startups that have joined the network, Rapidor and Signcatch, have completed around 160 test transactions between them in the past week.
"It's again like how it was last year on April 29 for B2C transactions on the network... The possibilities in B2B are much more as there are fewer established platforms in this space, compared to B2C," said T Koshy, chief executive officer and managing director of ONDC.
The network started alpha testing in a few cities in April last year and progressed to beta testing mode in September. It has upped the ante to onboard buyers and sellers to the network in the past couple of months with various incentive schemes and discounts.
A top commerce ministry official said that people at international fora have been surprised that the Indian government is building an interoperable commerce network pro bono, without any profit motive.
"However, the participants of course have to consider profit... But the margins should be such that even small stores and buyers can participate... The only thing they should keep in mind is that profit must be earned from big volumes and not values," he said.
At the launch, ONDC said that it had constituted a working group to explore the addition of credit and various financial products on the network.
ONDC chief operating officer Vibhor Jain said that credit would go a long way to help drive B2B transactions on the network as the sector works on a large amount of unsecured debt which is used as working capital.
According to network chief Koshy, the credit products could be live on ONDC as soon as in the next 2 months.
Moneycontrol reported last week that a revision of the incentive structure has led to a drop of retail transactions on the network by around 64 percent to 9,000 per day, from a peak of over 25,000.
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