BackIn a forest, all trees and plants – from the regal oak to the humble sapling – are connected through an underground network. This is the mycelial network, made up of countless individual fungal threads, or, mycelium. It routes water, nutrients and even information among trees and plants – helping to grow and sustain the forest. Strikingly, this network is not managed by one species or one tree, it is decentralised, facilitating exchange between all flora freely and efficiently. And this makes the network resilient – even if one thread breaks, the network is able to adapt and function.
At Societal Thinking, we’ve been travelling alongside System Orchestrators to enable exponential change. These journeys have led to many different destinations – some as policy bluebooks, some as open building blocks, some as platforms and some as open networks.
An open network functions just like the mycelial network. It is an interconnected whole with many individual nodes that communicate and exchange information and resources with each other freely without a central node dictating the who, how and when.
Think about buying something as small as a bar of soap. If we use a commercial platform, we may be able to discover and order the varieties of soap it has curated for us from its many vendors.
On an open network, however, we can go beyond the curation and find soap that someone may make by hand in the Himalayas or that local artisans make in Rajasthan or even soap powder made by someone in my neighbourhood. If there is no limit and nobody limits the things I can access. The possibilities of exchange become endless!
An open network has the combined choice from multiple platforms and the human touch of shopping from a neighbourhood store.
This is what the Open Network for Digital Commerce, or, ONDC does. Powered by Beckn Protocol brings together providers and consumers onto an open network.
At the heart of ONDC is agency for both providers and consumers. Consumers can access ONDC from an app of their choice. The app becomes a gateway rather than the network itself. No one platform aggregates the network, thus, allowing power to be distributed among providers and consumers. And, since multiple platforms can become nodes in ONDC, consumers can access a range of choices and providers big and small – from the kirana shop to big brands – can transact.
All of this has been baked into ONDC’s design, as an open network:
No intermediary = power to everyone
What sets an open network apart from a commercial platform is that the transactions in it aren’t controlled by an aggregator – which is to say that one entity doesn’t have the power to decide pricing and recommendations or accumulate data. There being no aggregator serving as the intermediary between providers and consumers leads to an open playing field where providers enjoy direct consumer access and the agency to navigate engagement in ways that suit them best while consumers gain a range of choice.
Low friction, high value
As open networks are powered by interoperable protocols such as Beckn, the cost and friction of onboarding and coordination between multiple platforms that are on the same network is very low. The philosophy behind open networks where different entities can interact and exchange freely and without an intermediary is finding relevance across many domains such as energy with UEI, education and skilling with ONEST, mobility with Namma Yatri and more.
Beckn codifies the lifecycle of a transaction into four stages – Discover, Order, Fulfillment and Post-Fulfillment. This transaction semantic can be seen as a dictionary, allowing diverse systems to communicate with one another and facilitate transactions to take place.
I found out about open networks two years ago and as much as they made sense to me, logically, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how they really work for a long time. On paper, I could see the transformative power of ONDC, ONEST and UEI but what held me back were the stories of the world I had grown up with.
In the 90s and the 2000s, stories of one player emerging victorious over all competitors were everywhere – from Google to Apple. More so, as commercial platforms became central in how we interact with the world, I started believing that without an intermediary, I would either be cheated or end up in irresolvable disputes.
With open networks comes a softer human side – one which asks us to be comfortable with many heroes, to turn what is scarce and high-friction into abundant and low-friction, to bring alive a world where the interests of many are catered to over just a few.
Read about how open networks can be leveraged to enable scheme discovery at scale.
