Hyderabad: India is leading the world in democratising access through digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiatives like Aadhaar, UPI, and now Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which is fast gaining acceptance with around 0.5 million transactions being clocked per day, ONDC non-executive chairperson RS Sharma told TOI.
Terming ONDC as transformational, Sharma, who took over the helm at ONDC in Sept this year, said: “We are doing about half a million transactions per day and around 15 million transactions per month. ONDC in a way is an extremely transformational effort because it’s a new paradigm of digital commerce. We have made it protocol-based and through proprietary protocols, we have unbundled it and brought buyers and sellers on the same platform.”
“ONDC has not only democratised but also unbundled the logistics from the selling of all kinds of goods and services. Everything that can be catalogued and can be transacted on the network. Today, many people don’t understand this, just like people did not understand Aadhaar and people did not understand UPI to begin with,” he pointed out.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ‘Algorand India Summit 2024′ here, Sharma pointed out to the monopolistic nature of the digital world. “There is only one Google, one WhatsApp, one Facebook, and only a couple of mobile operating systems. We don’t want such systems or solutions that provide powers to a few individuals or entities. So the solution for this country has to be frugal and democratic where entry barriers are low so that everyone can get access. Today, DPI has become a common word and India is leading that,” he said.
