Tech3 | ONDC slashes incentives ahead of festive season; Data protection rules expected this month; and more

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• ONDC slashes incentives ahead of festive season
• Data protection rules expected this month
• Lenovo expands AI footprint in India

ONDC slashes incentives ahead of festive season

All good things must come to an end.

This is the message the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) seems to be sending out to players ahead of the festive season when online sales shoot up.

Driving the news: ONDC has cut the maximum incentive payout?each network participant can avail of by 84% — from Rs 2.5 crore per month to Rs 40 lakh.

• This cash incentive from ONDC is used by platforms to fund discounts and offers for customers to promote rapid adoption of the government-backed network

• The move comes a couple of months after ONDC revealed plans to cut its order level incentives by up to 75%

Industry insiders said that the drastic cut in incentives this month might be aimed at conserving cash to go big on discounts and offers during the festive months of October and November.

Mitigating concentration risk:?ONDC has made few more important changes to the incentive scheme with its latest memo with the aim of ensuring that the incentives aren't cornered by a few big players.

• For a particular order, the combined subsidy that the buyer side app, the seller side app and the logistics platform can avail of from ONDC would be capped at Rs 40

• It has also introduced a fresh clause saying that the financial assistance will be provided only on orders placed between different buyer and seller platforms

As such, an order that originates on the buyer app of a company and is serviced by its own seller app can’t avail of the incentives.

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