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The Centre may set up an independent regulatory authority for the E-commerce sector much like the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), as has been revealed by an official statement. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is also working towards setting up an Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform.
Piyush Goyal, the commerce minister, led a meeting to review the ONDC initiative, along with members of its advisory committee. In the meeting, Goyal suggested some guidelines or basic infrastructure, size, ethics and principles of the platform. ONDC is a network based on open protocol. It will enable local commerce across segments to be discovered and engaged by any network-enabled application. ONDC intends to generate new opportunities, curb digital monopolies and by supporting micro, small and medium enterprises and small traders and help them get on online platforms.
"ONDC shall take all measures to ensure confidentiality & privacy of data in the network. ONDC shall not mandate sharing of any transaction-level data by participants with ONDC. Will work with its participants to publish anonymised aggregate metrics on network performance without compromising on confidentiality and privacy," an official statement said.
The platform will also be compliant with the Information Technology Act, 2000 and designed for compliance with the emerging Personal Data Protection Bill.
"Merchants will be able to save their data under ONDC to build credit history and reach consumers," the statement said.
Last month, DPIIT had set up an advisory committee, comprising experts like Infosys Chairman and Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani, National Health Authority Chief Executive Officer R S Sharma, among others, to advise the government on designing and accelerating the adoption of ONDC.
The E-commerce traders have been facing problems because of conflicts with offline traders for quite some time. The government should encourage the offline traders to join E-commerce platforms and also to see that the E-commerce business functions properly to avoid the prospects of customers flooding the markets and going to stores.