Amazon India executive "excited" for ONDC innovation potential

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jun 28, 2022

Amazon India has expressed that it is “excited” for the government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce and will work closely with the government to develop it, seeing it as a way to digitise more retailers. 

“At this stage, we are engaging very closely with the ONDC group, and we are quite committed to what the government is wanting to do, which is to digitise kiranas, local stores,” Amazon India’s country manager for consumer business Manish Tiwary told the Press Trust of India in a recent interaction. “So yes, excited by what it can do. It's a nascent industry, we will work closely with the government.”

Instead of seeing the cross-marketplace commerce initiative as competition, Tiwary stated that it will help bring more shoppers and sellers online, which is also Amazon’s goal. “I am focused on serving the next 500 million customers,” said Tiwary. 

“I look forward to innovations, which will lift all the boats in the ecosystem,” said Tiwary. “So, if ONDC, at scale, manages to get to 200 million sellers, that's awesome. Because you're getting people to then sell digital. So that's the overall thing. There's no question of threatening, we are at an early stage.”

The government launched a pilot program for ONDC in five Indian cities this April. The aim is to expand the UPI-type protocol pan-India in the future. Buyers will be able to browse products across multiple e-commerce platforms in one place with the aim of democratising e-commerce.