AMN / NEW DELHI
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal today reviewed the progress on the Open Network for Digital Commerce ONDC initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade DPIIT.
The Minister was apprised about the significant progress made for the project. Quality Council of India has established a team of experts for the execution of the project in a mission mode. A number of small and medium enterprises have been on-boarded as volunteers to complement the ONDC team. An ONDC gateway has also been established. About 20 entities covering all network components are at various stages of onboarding. The DPIIT has approved a budget of approximately Rs 10 crores for initial work on the project.
It has been suggested to establish a private sector-led non-profit company. The entity is expected to provide a start-up mindset for a population scale implementation, enabled by a management with a futuristic vision, leadership with a deep understanding of commerce, comfort with cutting edge technology and missionary outlook to drive change. A non-profit company structure removes any incentive for owners to drive for profit maximization, keep the focus on ethical and responsible behaviour while providing for trust, rigorous norms of governance, accountability and transparency.
Mr Goyal expressed satisfaction with the progress made and desired to compress timelines for making this network a reality soon. He directed that wide participation from the ecosystem should be ensured and the institutional structure should be created in such a manner so as to ensure that the entity conducts itself in an ethical, cooperative, democratic and responsible manner. He directed that special efforts must be made to build trust in the ONDC network and elaborate mechanisms must be put in place for dispute resolution.
The meeting was attended by Secretary DPIIT Anurag Jain and members of Advisory Council of ONDC including CEO NHA R.S. Sharma, Chairman QCI Adil Zainulbhai, MD and CEO NPCI Dilip Asbe, MD and CEO NSDL-e Gov Suresh Sethi, CEO, RAI Kumar Rajagopalan, Founder of MyGov Arvind Gupta and Ms Anjali Bansal of Avaana Capital.
The meeting was also attended by a number of prospective promoters including senior representatives from State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, NABARD, SIDBI, National Payments Corporation of India, NSDL, CDSL, NSE and BSE.