E-commerce network will nurture startups: Goyal
NEW DELHI: The Open Network for Digital Commerce will provide greater market access in India and shield startups and small enterprises from dominant e-commerce giants, in line with the digital payment system Unified Payment Interface (UPI), commerce minister Piyush Goyal said.
“We are working very actively on the Open Network for Digital Commerce, which I believe will be a game-changer and help our entrepreneurs to save costs as well as build trust,” he said while inaugurating the Startup India Innovation Week on Monday. The network, an initiative of the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT), aims to make e-commerce function independent of any particular platform. The not-for-profit online network will also check the dominance of e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart.
Top lenders such as the SBI and PNB, and leading bourses are keen to promote the e-commerce network. HT reported on the network on October 27, detailing plans to do for e-commrce what UPI did for fintech in the country.
“This will bridge the gap between the large e-commerce companies with great financial muscle power, and new startups... the kind of struggle that they have to face today, we’ll help them eliminate that,” the minister said, citing the example of UPI, India’s digital payment system that integrates multiple bank accounts into a single application.
ONDC will work like UPI, which has transformed the fintech ecosystem, Goyal said. “I’m confident that the network will play a similar role for our e-commerc start-ups and bring equitable competition,” he said.
The minister was hinting at the power of Upi-based indigenous payment system that gave tough competition to global firms such as Mastercard and Visa. In 2020-21 alone, Upibased BHIM processed 22 billion financial transactions worth ₹41 lakh crore. Goyal urged firms into innovation to strive to take India to the top 25 in the Global Innovation Index. “Our startups are the key reason behind India’s rise in Global Innovation Index from 76 in 2014 to 46 in 2021,” he said, adding that startups have turned Covid crises into opportunity and made 2021 the year of unicorns; India has 82 such firms; third highest in the world.