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As we all know how Microsoft has changed the landscape of the entire world making it easier for people to work and how business just boomed after Microsoft was introduced. Somewhat similar is happening in India, which many people have still failed to notice .What prompted me to write this article are two events , First dozens of screenshots going around of how ordering food on ONDC is much cheaper than ordering on swiggy or zomato and Second News articles on how Service exports are rising much faster in India. You might wonder how both are related to each other , of course both are related to each other and there is decades of hard work in the IT industry that has been done for it.
Digital revolution of India
To understand ONDC , first we need to understand the genesis of the Aadhar stack famously known as JAM(JAN DHAN, AADHAR, MOBILE) trinity in India . It all started with the appointment of Nandan Nilekani as Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India popularly known as Aadhar. Government appointed him to provide digital ID to everyone. Next step of the digital revolution was Jaan Dhan where bank accounts were opened for the marginalized people. It was possible because of e-kyc where bank accounts could be opened within fraction of seconds with the help of Aadhar. With this financial inclusion subsidies are transferred directly to the people’s accounts eliminating corruption , even the IMF called it a Logistic marvel.
Masterstroke in the digital revolution was the entry of Jio, along with financial inclusion, now people got access to cheap data which sort of created a platform ( popularly known as AAdhar Stack) for Innovation . Famous Innovation on this stack is UPI ( Unified Payments Interface ), with the help of UPI payments have become so easy that today .If I want to buy a samosa of Rs.5/- that too in somewhere rural area of chhattisgarh, I can do it with help of UPI.
What is ONDC:
ONDC is OPEN NETWORK FOR DIGITAL COMMERCE, it aims to bring all seller and buyer applications on to a single platform . Many people are speaking on just how food is cheaper but let us try to understand how actually works
As we can see from the diagram , all sellers and buyers will be from a single platform, suppose If I want to buy a product , I could open the amazon app and search for it , it will show all the products listed on the platform including that of flipkart . So I can order from flipkart using an amazon app and I could use a third party delivery partner like Indian post or dunzo etc.,. It would unbundle and democratize entire e-commerce. Any shop owner can list his product on the platform for a minimal fee.
What does it mean for India:
Consumers are beneficiaries of this innovation but the biggest beneficiaries are the small retail shop owners or small factory owners . Small factory owners can list their products on this platform. They would not need to do a lot of promotion or advertising for their products because product visibility would be based on reviews of your products . If your products get good reviews your products would be listed above unlike in the present system where E-commerce giants list their own products and give them a lot of visibility thereby killing competition.
Another important use case is you can get to know your customers, you could know who your customers are, how frequently they would order your products. For instance, In our college days we used to order paneer kulcha on zomato from a particular restaurant very frequently but the restaurant owner doesn’t have an idea who is ordering , if he would have known about his customers he would have setup cloud kitchen in our college thereby offering food at cheap price.
What does it mean for World:
World must be watching this digital revolution in India and might be going wow and they would also participate in this digital revolution just like India , this can be emphasized by the statement made by IMF that G20 nations should try to adopt the Indian stack. We have a unique opportunity of building Indian-like stacks in other countries thereby creating employment for our people and increasing our service exports from our country.
Many people in India believe that India is unable to become another powerhouse like China because we are democratic country. But people need to understand the fact that we have built platforms like UPI , ONDC because we are a democratic country. It would not have been possible in a dictatorship , you might point out to the fact that China built Ali Pay but that was successful because many princelings of Communist party of China invested in that company and in order to make it successful they crushed the competition.
India has the unique opportunity to build these systems in other countries because the problems we faced before this digital revolution are the same that many South american and African countries are facing right now. They want solutions for these problems and only India can provide them at a cheap rate and on a not for profit basis.
Many countries would be willing to partner with India because India, unlike China, doesn’t have any territorial ambitions and is not an aggressive country. India being a democratic country gets an advantage because many countries want their data to be safe and don’t want foreign companies to start sending those data to other countries. Even if Indian companies start snooping on their data , they would have the confidence to approach our Independent Indian judiciary to stop snooping which is definitely not possible in China because the judiciary is controlled by the Chinese government.
Many people believe that India’s weakness is its democracy but I would say that our democracy is our strength. If we leverage it we can become a prosperous country. Finally I don’t know If we can become another China but I can definitely say, If we get our act together , ten years down the line many countries would be aspiring to become another India.
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