Why the ONDC will give birth to a series of innovations never seen before

Let's start by a simple primer on ONDC. Say you're a medicine seller with a physical shop, and losing hair watching Netmeds & Pharmeasy taking away your customers. From the comfort of their homes, your customers visit these portals, find medicines, pay, and get them delivered.

Imagine one fine day, your phone starts to buzz with customers looking for medicines. From all across the town. Some app has told them that along with netmeds/pharmaeasy you have that medicine in store too. Through that app, they not only ordered the medicine from you, but also made a payment to you through an integrated payment service. And there was a delivery service to pick it from your store and deliver it to them.

You did not move a muscle in setting all this. It just happened. You're suddenly back in business and can, theoretically, think of gaining customers back from these med-tech companies.

That, and more, is what ONDC will do to your business. It will bring all individual service providers in one place and arrange the buying experience for your customer as if they were shopping from Amazon.

If you're a business, you will now have access to every customer looking for whatever you have to sell. Which is good. Just the perfect wet dream of businesses!

Except for one thing! The customer mindset.

If you're selling a commodity product, which most businesses do, the customer will be exposed to your competition too. And the customer will choose the lowest priced offerings. It's a no-brainer.

Companies and service providers will have to rethink their supply chains, rethink every single ounce of efficiency in their business process if they have to remain cost-effective.

Payments, delivery, procurement, storage, just-in-time manufacturing, and the entire supply chain will have to evolve now. The only alternative to not evolving in the ONDC age is going out of business.

This is like the 90s again. The Internet is public, the world is connected. And those who are willing to change themselves will have a very long laugh.

Here's to exciting times ahead!

Know how you can adapt and benefit from ONDC? Write to us at hello@itmtb.com.