Open Registries and Unbundling Policies can help Platform niche innovation in decisive new ways

I've found this recent report from Antler extremely interesting.

The report covers Indias Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative.

ONDC is a project aimed at unbundling the e-commerce stack by creating open registries (for identities, product identification, and more) and opening up new interfaces, and introducing specific roles:

As of March 09, 2023, the network is live in 181 cities in the alpha phase and 2 cities (Bangalore and Meerut) in the beta phase. According to the ONDC website, there are 35 network participants who have gone live so far. Network participants include buyer apps, seller apps, and logistics providers.?

Check out this descriptive account of the initiative from the Internet Freedom Foundation . ONDC's unbundling approach allows for greater flexibility and customization, enabling new use cases that are currently hindered by the limitations of existing platforms.

We often find ourselves concentrating on the defensibility of existing platforms and their competitive advantages. However, it is equally important to consider the impact of groundbreaking initiatives, such as India's Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), on the future of e-commerce and its potential to unlock a plethora of innovative use cases.

With ONDC's more open approach, a whole new range of possibilities emerges. For instance as Antler report underlines: "users will be able to book a cab to the airport and simultaneously arrange for coffee and food upon arrival, all through a single map application used to plan their trip."

This level of unbundling and integration can outperform existing vertically integrated platforms by offering higher degrees of niche customization, shorter flows to value, and enhanced composability.

As we look towards the future of e-commerce and digital platforms, it is essential to recognize the potential of initiatives like ONDC to transform the landscape. By enabling greater unbundling and composability, these projects can lead to a more diverse, innovative, and user-centric ecosystem, where new use cases and applications can thrive. Traditional platforms often prioritize standardized transactions and shorter flows to enhance profitability and scalability, at the expense of stifling innovation and limiting the user experience. Platforms are often scarcely evolutive from the transaction design perspective and tend to be impacted by a vertical disruptor.

Initiatives like ONDC can drive further differentiation and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike, letting players remain more nimble, more local, and more specialized, helping address typical industrialization and sclerotization trends.