It doesn’t look like a disruption at first glance. There is no single app taking over screens, no aggressive consumer push reshaping shopping habits overnight. But, somewhere beneath the surface, something fundamental might begin to shift. If commerce is no longer anchored to one platform, what happens to visibility? What happens to the very currency brands have relied on to win online?
The rules were simple for years. Platforms like Amazon and Flipkart controlled discovery, and brands, in turn, paid to stay visible. The higher the spend, the stronger the presence. But a new player changes that. ONDC unsettles that equation by removing the single gatekeeper.
At its core, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), launched in 2022, is designed to unbundle digital commerce by separating buyers, sellers, and platforms into an open, interoperable network. Instead of one platform owning the entire journey—from discovery to transaction, ONDC allows multiple apps to plug into the same network, enabling sellers to be discovered across interfaces rather than being locked into one ecosystem. The promise is simple: to reduce platform dependency and create a more level playing field. The reality, however, is far more complex.
Amita, Srivastava, Senior Vice President ‑ Account Management, Carat India explains, “In traditional marketplaces, brands could scale presence through higher spends, effectively renting visibility from a platform. In an open network, that equation breaks down with no single gatekeeper controlling discovery.” What ONDC creates instead is a distributed discovery ecosystem, where visibility is not just a function of spend but of how well a brand shows up across multiple apps, touchpoints, and moments of intent. “Visibility is dead. Long live discoverability,” she adds.
But if visibility is no longer something that can be bought and locked in one place, where does it really live now and more importantly, how stable is it?
The answer, increasingly, lies in a system that is still taking shape. While ONDC has scaled rapidly in terms of reach, onboarding lakhs of sellers and expanding across hundreds of cities, its discovery layer remains fluid.
Suumit Kapoor, Brand Growth Consultant captures this distinction sharply when he says, “The numbers tell you ONDC is real infrastructure, but being listed and being discovered are two different things. Most brands haven’t figured that out yet.” In the absence of a homepage to buy or an algorithm to outbid, discovery is no longer driven by advertising muscle, but by catalogue quality, search relevance, and fulfilment reliability, areas where many brands are still adapting.
This change becomes even more evident when one looks at how discovery surfaces themselves behave. Unlike closed platforms, where visibility is relatively predictable, ONDC’s discovery depends on buyer apps that can evolve, pivot, or even exit. The shutdown of PhonePe’s ONDC-powered Pincode app, after significant investment, and the quiet pullback of ONDC’s retail interface from Paytm, are early signals of this volatility.
At the same time, new discovery layers continue to emerge and evolve. Platforms like Magicpin have leaned into ONDC with models such as pay-per-conversion, while others like IDFC FIRST Bank’s buyer-facing integrations and hyperlocal networks are experimenting with how consumers access sellers through the open network. The ecosystem is not static; it is constantly reshaping how and where brands get discovered. But then, in a system where discovery is both distributed and unstable, does ‘buying visibility’ even make sense?
Manish Solanki, COO and Co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea offers a clear shift in perspective. “Visibility now lives across multiple buyer apps such as Magicpin, Paytm and others, each with its own interface and logic. Buying visibility becomes a mix of earning discoverability and selectively amplifying it through standardised product data, competitive pricing and strong ratings.” The emphasis, he suggests, moves away from bidding wars towards building fundamentals that travel across the network.
What this creates instead is a distributed discovery ecosystem, where visibility is no longer a function of spend alone, but of how well a brand shows up across multiple apps, touchpoints, and moments of intent. Building on this, Srivastava explains that visibility is shaped across multiple levers. From ensuring presence across platforms through partnerships and demand generation, to maintaining high-quality, standardised product content for discoverability, and leveraging first-party data and continuous optimisation to sustain visibility. She adds that seamless, trust-led journeys become critical in converting discovery into outcomes, especially as consumer journeys grow more fragmented and search-led.
But this also changes how brands think about marketing itself. If platforms are no longer doing the heavy-lifting, the onus shifts outward. Solanki points out that brands now need to drive demand through social, influencer, and content ecosystems, ensuring that when a consumer eventually lands on any buyer app, the brand shows up consistently and compellingly. Discovery on ONDC, in many ways, begins outside ONDC.
There is also a deeper structural shift underway. Traditional marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart have historically built their dominance on controlling access through commissions, preferred listings, and tightly managed discovery environments. ONDC challenges that by separating the buyer and seller layers, allowing sellers to be discovered across multiple apps at significantly lower cost. It does not dismantle these platforms overnight, but it begins to question the value of paying for access when discovery can be distributed.
Ashok Lalla, an independent brand and digital advisor brings in that reality check. “The request for views on this story was the first time in a rather long while that I came across the mention of ONDC. It is there, yet it is not really on anyone’s mind. The old adage ‘jo dikhta hai, wo bikhta hai’ still holds true,” he says. He further points out that while ONDC may offer a different way of shopping and address some existing platform challenges, these are not necessarily strong enough triggers for consumers to shift away from familiar, established e-commerce platforms.
This creates an interesting tension. On one hand, ONDC opens up the ecosystem, allowing smaller brands to compete without being outspent. On the other, it introduces a level of complexity that requires brands to manage presence across fragmented interfaces, each with its own logic and user behaviour. As Solanki indicates, while the network does democratise access, it also raises the bar for execution.
Hence, ONDC’s story may not be about the present as much as it is about what comes next.
Kapoor draws a parallel with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which started as infrastructure before evolving into one of the most competitive marketing battlegrounds in India. ONDC, he suggests, could follow a similar trajectory moving from transactions to attention, and eventually, to advertising. The signals are already emerging, from transit-based discovery moments to content-led commerce journeys that directly link to product listings.
But for now, the shift remains incomplete. As Lalla suggests, without a stronger push into consumer mindspace, ONDC risks staying peripheral to mainstream behaviour. The infrastructure is in place, the possibilities are visible, but the habit is yet to form.
Which leaves brands navigating an in-between moment, where visibility is no longer bought the old way, but not yet fully redefined in the new one.
