The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is working on an evaluation mechanism to identify and penalise e-commerce entities participating in the government’s Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC) system that are not abiding by the rules and regulations of the country including ones to check monopolies and unfair trade practices.

“DPIIT wants all ONDC participants to be compliant with rules of the land. We are reviewing the existing ONDC system. The idea is to make the system so robust that those who are non-compliant can be identified and removed,” Sanjiv, Joint Secretary, DPIIT said in an interaction with reporters on Thursday.

Open networks

Through ONDC, the government aims to promote open networks for all aspects of trade in goods and services over digital or electronic networks. While on one hand it seeks to provide multiple options to small businesses to be discoverable online and do business, it also hopes to increase freedom of choice for consumers and enable matching demand with the nearest available supply. 

Large e-commerce companies, such as Amazon and Flipkart, have been accused of  malpractices such as predatory pricing, deep discounting, loss funding, controlling inventory and adopting preferential sellers by various quarters including traders’ body CAIT, and are also under CCI scrutiny.

The ONDC network policy will also have rules to protect personal information and resolve grievances.

While it would take some time for ONDC to grow to its full potential, more and more sellers, consumer apps, logistics firms payment gateways were joining the network and the momentum would be maintained, said T Koshy, CEO, ONDC.

Major milestones

ONDC has achieved major milestones in the past few months, including on-boarding 37 network participants, ranging from market leaders to emerging Indian start-ups, over 26,000 merchants, and more than 27 lakh products. 

“ONDC is giving special attention to non-digitised sellers, merchants, and businesses, with 8 Kanchipuram weavers and 4 social sector enterprises live on ONDC with SIDBI’s support,” Koshy said.

Logistics firms, including Dunzo, Shiprocket, Delhivery and Shipyaari have also come on board, he added.

Mobility (taxi and auto rickshaw services) has been enabled in the two cities of Kochi and Bengaluru, with 5 Lakhs users registered for the service. 

ONDC’s geographic coverage has expanded to over 210 cities across India but, at the moment, only 15 cities have over a 100 merchants. ONDC logistics partners can deliver products to 90 per cent pin codes across India while the aim is to have coverage in every pin code in the country, Sanjiv said.

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