People are underestimating the potential of Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC), which has the potential to become a leading platform in the future, said Vijay Shekhar Sharma at an event on Monday.
“According to me, people are underestimating the power of this platform to inevitably become a bigger platform, at least as Paytm and other LP (leading platforms) aside from the commerce business you’re all on it,” he said.
Although Sharma didn’t explicitly mention Paytm, he said that 11.8 million customers came to its product through ONDC.
“10 million is a milestone for a product. If we talk about the success of UPI, there are still 250-300 million users in India, if we look at it, we have already crossed the 10 million customer base mark in ONDC,” he highlighted.
Sharma added, “I believe that if we look at overall commerce and different categories, Indian commerce is around 50 million or so. If you are a one-fifth player, you are a legitimate player and more categories and use cases will drive an even larger number of customers.
While talking about more sellers on the ONDC app than customers, he said that it is a network build-up journey, it can’t be based on one thing superlative, explaining that it is crucial to have merchants first on the platforms as customers can’t buy without the products on the app.
“Many consumers will come to buy what? Many merchants will come first, If we bring in a large number of merchants, it’s on the table. Customers are out there searching for it and in my opinion, it is not a fight of whether the consumer will take it or not. There are an out large amount consumers ready to come online to shop and consume the product out there ” he said.
However, he did acknowledge that consumer trust and the discovery have to be sorted out.
“On the day our dramatic catalog is released, customers will begin placing orders and at that point, money will start flowing from consumers to the merchants. In my opinion, more consumer interfaces will emerge sooner,” he underlined.
