Bengaluru: The board of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has appointed eight temporary members to the executive committee who will be in charge of the company until a replacement for former head T. Koshy is finalized, a person in the know told Mint.
Top names include Vibhor Jain (current chief operating officer at ONDC and former chief of Atlanta Healthcare), Nitin Mishra (chief technology officer), Supriyo Ghosh (senior vice president of technology), and Nitin Nair (senior vice president of mobility), the person added.
Hrushikesh Mehta and Marichi Mathur (senior vice presidents of network expansion), Krishan Agarwal (SVP, finance) and Deepti Pandey (Lead, HR) have also joined the team.
“The committee will look after ONDC’s operations till such time a new CEO is appointed. The board is considering several options [for CEO replacements], but there is no rush,” said another person privy to the developments, seeking anonymity.
ONDC did not respond to Mint’s queries till press time.
Mint reported on Thursday that ONDC’s managing director and chief executive officer T Koshy stepped down following a three-year stint. The former EY partner will remain on board till 30 June.
Koshy’s exit came a month after ONDC’s chief business officer Shireesh Joshi resigned after three years, citing personal reasons. R.S. Sharma, a former mission director of UIDAI, stepped down as the non-executive chairperson of ONDC in December last year after serving four months, as per a report by The Economic Times.
The management changes come at a crucial time for ONDC. While the company continue to focus on eight major domains which include food and beverage, grocery, and financial services, ONDC is cautious of not spreading itself too thin across categories, said a third person close to the development.
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India’s digital commerce backbone
Started in December 2022 as a public infrastructure initiative by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade, ONDC was formed with the intention of creating an all-inclusive e-commerce platform that serves the public aim of linking the entire country for wide economic participation.
To this end, it focused on breaking e-commerce monopolies by standardizing marketplaces, promoting local suppliers, and streamlining logistics.
It aimed to position itself as the ‘UPI of e-commerce,’ emphasising its role as a network rather than a platform. ONDC logged a total of over 16 million orders in March alone, according to its LinkedIn post.
ONDC has expanded its domains over the years. Mint reported in October that it was gearing up to roll out a new initiative to deliver groceries and other items within 30 minutes to two hours as quick commerce grows in popularity in the country. In August, ONDC announced its entry into sachetised insurance and investment products such as mutual funds.
But the journey hasn’t been without hurdles. It struggled to scale up some non-food categories like fashion, personal care and grocery, underscoring the complexities of democratising e-commerce in a country where less than 10% of the population shops online.
Some network participants also reportedly re-aligned their ONDC strategies by pulling away from non-performing areas. Payments app PhonePe pulled out of non-food categories except unreserved ticket bookings early last year.
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However, Koshy said in May 2024 that the network empowers brands to choose their growth strategies based on their strengths.
“The network is formed to empower democratisation, not socialism. Firms are allowed to choose categories depending on their bandwidth and expertise. Just because something may not work for one player doesn’t mean it was built to fail,” Koshy had said.
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