ONDC, account aggregator network open up new avenues for startups: Nandan Nilekani

Speaking at TieCon Pune on Saturday, Nilekani, cofounder and non-executive chairman of Infosys, said Aadhaar and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) had shown that when you build the right kind of rails at scale, and make them available as APIs (application programming interface), entrepreneurs can build on that and create multi-billion-dollar valuations, referring to Jio using Aadhaar to instantly verify users and companies like Paytm and PhonePe.

“If the basic rails are provided for by the government or at the public system level, then entrepreneurs can leverage these rails and build phenomenal applications. I see this as very complementary,” said Nilekani who is also among the key architects of Aadhaar and UPI framework.

The opportunity, he said, could range from creating consumer-facing apps, working with suppliers or logistics providers to support the massive growth in shipping, or building new direct-to-consumer brands.

Nilekani said job creation was among the biggest challenges for India at present, and tackling it will need millions of small businesses to do well as that in turn would lead to millions of jobs being created.

“What small businesses need is access to capital and access to markets… The account aggregator system allows access to capital for small businesses leveraging their own data, and that is being rolled out and that will lead to democratisation of credit to small business,” he said. “The second is how do they get access to markets and that’s where ONDC comes in.”

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The account aggregator network was unveiled by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in September last year while ONDC was incorporated as a Section 8 non-profit company in December 2021 with Quality Council of India and Protean eGov Technologies Ltd as initial promoters.

While delivering the opening remarks at TieCon Pune, a two-day annual conference of entrepreneurs and city luminaries, on Friday, scientist and Padma Vibhushan Raghunath Mashelkar said there needed to be a paradigm shift in the innovation strategy, from being followers and creating me-too ventures to becoming leaders and creating global firsts out of India.

“In the past, India was good at reverse engineering, copying what the West did,” he said. “But if we want to succeed, we have to shift our way of thinking. We can’t take small steps to success. We need to pole vault.”

Bhavish Aggarwal, cofounder and CEO of Ola Cabs and Ola Electrics, speaking about his experience building Ola and now Ola Electric, said capital has an upcycle and a down cycle, and entrepreneurs had to know how to be able to ride both the ups and down of this.

TieCon Pune chairperson Ganesh Natarajan summed up the mood of most of the speakers when he said he was dangerously optimistic about the potential for Indian entrepreneurs and startups given the opportunities that lay ahead.