A study of 678 news stories finds India’s government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce is increasingly understood as infrastructure for a more interoperable and less platform-dependent digital economy.
A new study of India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce suggests the government-backed platform is being understood less as another shopping app and more as an attempt to redesign the architecture of online trade itself.
Published in the Communications of the Association for Information Systems, the paper analysed 678 online news stories from five leading Indian outlets and identified four broad ways the network is being framed: as a bridge between competing interests, as a way to reinforce trust and fairness, as a platform that can spread into adjacent services, and as a shift from closed marketplaces to an open commercial network. The authors used latent dirichlet allocation, a text-mining technique that groups large volumes of articles into recurring themes, before interpreting those themes through frame-alignment theory, which examines how ideas are packaged to attract support.
That framing matters because ONDC remains at an early stage of adoption, and much of the ecosystem still lacks a clear shared understanding of what it is meant to do. According to the network’s own description, ONDC was designed by India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade as population-scale digital infrastructure built on open-network principles. It is intended to connect retail, logistics, mobility, transit, travel and financial services through interoperable digital rails that reduce fragmentation and expand participation for businesses, consumers, gig workers and small producers.
The study argues that one of ONDC’s most important narratives is “bridging” different stakeholders around values such as openness, autonomy and inclusion. That is significant in a market long dominated by large platforms, where merchants often rely on a small number of gatekeepers for visibility, pricing and access to buyers. IBM’s overview of the network says ONDC is based on open-source specifications and is meant to let different e-commerce systems interoperate, improving price discovery and widening consumer choice.
A second theme centres on trust. The researchers found repeated emphasis on inclusion, transparency and fairness, suggesting that ONDC’s public image is being tied to the promise of a more level playing field. That message is consistent with the network’s pitch to brands and sellers. ONDC says on its direct-to-consumer retail page that the system offers lower commissions, broader digital visibility and connected logistics support, and it says the network includes more than 75,000 sellers across categories ranging from electronics to grocery, beauty, wellness and lifestyle.
The paper also shows that the conversation around ONDC is moving beyond retail. One frame extends the network’s role into food delivery, logistics and mobility, while another presents it as a transformation in the logic of digital commerce itself. In that telling, shopping is no longer organised around a single dominant marketplace, but around an open network in which buyer and seller apps can connect across platforms. That is also how outside observers have described ONDC’s broader ambition: not merely to compete with existing marketplaces, but to make online commerce more platform-agnostic in the same way India’s payments system was opened up through UPI.
For policymakers and businesses, the study’s main point is that adoption will depend not just on technical interoperability, but on whether the network’s story resonates with merchants, consumers and service providers. The authors say ONDC’s transformative potential lies in its ability to reshape expectations about how digital trade should work: less dependent on a single intermediary, more inclusive in design, and broader in scope than conventional e-commerce.
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