Paris, Amsterdam look to adopt Nandan Nilekani-backed Beckn protocol for interoperable mobility

Beckn protocol is a set of specifications consisting of APIs, data models, reference architecture, transaction mechanisms, and global standards that when adopted by digital platforms, enable the creation of decentralised networks

At a time when the European Union (EU) is railing against anti-competitive practices of tech companies, transport departments and civic communities in the region's cities, like Paris, Zurich and Amsterdam are looking to adopt the Nandan Nilekani-backed Beckn protocol for making urban mobility services interoperable.

“Anyone, anywhere in the world, can use Beckn Protocol as it is an open-source specification. Now, some communities across Europe and other regions are getting inspired by ideas like ONDC and Namma Yatri,” said Sujith Nair, Chief Executive Officer of Foundation for Interoperability in Digital Commerce (FIDE), the philanthropic venture backed by Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani, which created the protocol.

“We are a not-for-profit that is into designing open source specifications and advocating the need for interoperability in the digital economy. We don’t offer any specific services as such, and along with a global open-source community around Beckn Protocol, we help answer questions on the implementation of the protocol," Nair added.

Beckn protocol is a set of specifications consisting of APIs, data models, reference architecture, transaction mechanisms and global standards, which when adopted by digital platforms enable the creation of decentralised networks.

While the protocol started off with the idea of designing the specs for a network to make mobility services such as cab aggregation interoperable, FIDE (earlier called Beckn Foundation) soon realised that it could be extended to almost any form of online services.

Subsequently, the Beckn protocol was adopted to create the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which aims to break monopolies in online retail and add Rs 3.75 lakh crore to the digital commerce sector in the next few years. The protocol has also been used by the Unified Health Interface (UHI), another government-backed initiative to enable interoperability in health services like doctor consultations, booking lab tests and managing blood donations.

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“Discovery, order, fulfilment, post fulfilment for any economic resource — whether it is grocery item, restaurant, taxi, bus, metro, hotel room, doctor’s calendar, skill learning, education manufacturing plant — can be done on Beckn. I can discover an economic resource and do a transaction on it in a decentralised way," said Nair.

“In UHI, you can discover the doctors’ calendar, check which slot is idle, and book an appointment. Or you can discover an idle EV charging point, book it for a certain period of time, a certain amount of energy, and also complete the transaction on it,” he added.

Now, a university in Germany is building a manufacturing domain adaptation of Beckn Protocol, as Beckn for Industry 4.0. With the 'rent a machine' project at the Hof University of Applied Sciences in Germany, researchers and students have set themselves the task of creating a platform accessible to all companies in the manufacturing sector, on which free production capacities of all kinds will ultimately be available and rentable worldwide.

“One way to imagine this work is, let’s say you want to manufacture the dispenser for your hand sanitiser product as a manufacturer. You want to manufacture a lot of them and your plant capacity is presently exhausted. Using a Beckn-enabled open network, you can discover similar plants that have idle capacity and allocate jobs to them commercially over the network,” explained Nair.

Closer home, Beckn’s manifestation via ONDC is already showing some glimpses of scale. While the network is seeing around 25,000-30,000 retail purchases of food, groceries, electronics and other consumer goods per day, it has crossed 1 lakh ride-hailing transactions a day. In the next few months, ONDC is also aiming to enter financial services and enable purchases of credit and insurance products.

However, the team at FIDE that authored the Beckn specifications still remains small, although the developer community that constantly updates the open-source protocol has grown to 3,000.

“What is a protocol? It is nothing but a virtual document of specifications. It doesn't take much to maintain. A whole open-source community on GitHub maintains the protocol and helps it evolve," said Nair.

“FIDE is a small team of eight people that is not-for-profit and philanthropically funded. Our job is not to build platforms or software and participate in such open networks ourselves. Neither do we manage or operate open networks. We are a protocol design company that advocates the use of interoperable open specifications and Digital Public Infrastructure based on open specifications to solve for aspects like innovation, inclusion, equity and free competition in the digital economy," he added.