We define L-Commerce as ‘decentralized e-commerce platforms’ optimized for sustainable local living. While the concept of Open Commerce too was introduced quite some time back, now we have a great government initiative called ONDC, or the Open Network for Digital Commerce that goes a long way in turning our dreams into reality. 

With the launch of ONDC, some of the dreams have taken better shape. For example, we can now talk about L-Commerce marketplaces coming up in every single district of India, interconnected via ONDC, and poised to revolutionize the district-level economies in a way that is sustainable and abundantly develops digital and ecological wealth at the local level. As we know, the marketplaces in metropolitan cities will follow a different path to open networks which is precisely the trend that’s giving growing visibility to farmers' markets in a developed economy like the United States. 

So, What is an L-Commerce Marketplace? 

It is a digital version of the shopping complex run by the local municipality that has the added benefit of an integrated logistics network. It includes setting up autonomous hyperlocal (L-Commerce) marketplaces at the district headquarters – each one connected to the rest through the ONDC. Each of these marketplaces throws up multiple opportunities for the local entrepreneurs, who are called ‘Circle Promoters’. 

These local aggregators handhold sellers and producers to create attractive catalogs of their products and services. Thereafter they use creative digital marketing solutions and other growth hacks to bring customers to this L-Commerce marketplace while managing or coordinating the logistics to ensure that the buyer gets the product or service in good time and condition. A town of approximately 50,000 households provides opportunities for at least 100 such entrepreneurs. And once they get integrated into an L-Commerce platform on the ONDC network, the local trade begins to perform as one single entity for the sole benefit of the local economy. What’s more, once the hyperlocal economy shows signs of growth, it jolts other parts towards innovating on both the product and service front. 

How Does the Local Trade Perceive the Digital Future? 

A survey conducted with 1,000+ local businesses across the small town of Bhimavaram, a small city located in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, proved to be a revelation. It showed more than 90 percent of the local businesses felt they had missed the digital bus even though 80 percent of those surveyed were using the UPI payment gateway. 

More than 60 percent of the respondents said they weren’t sure about the business prospects of a digital future with only one in ten actually reporting that they could manage the digitization process by themselves. The rest of those surveyed sought some sort of training to be able to tackle their entry into the digital economy. So, what does it tell us? Most Indian towns are prime targets for the assisted digitization model adopted as part of L-Commerce expansion.

So, How Does the Process Get Initiated?

The action begins either at the district headquarters city or at a local engineering college committed to student entrepreneurship. Virtual marketplaces are created by these entrepreneur groups called ‘Circles’ with each of them functioning as a hyperlocal commerce platform that hosts multiple mobile apps that power, the sale, purchase, and delivery processes. Each circle is managed via a console – role-based low-code marketplace management application. Well-defined processes drive seller and catalog management, customer experience management, and campaign management.

Overall governance is provided through a mentor cloud that includes experienced professionals and strategists from a wide array of business operations fields in addition to data trust entities at a district and state level. This district-level network of local digital platforms is being supported by enterprise-anchored industry clouds on ONDC thus providing a synergistic relationship between global and local supply chains.  

The Road Ahead Presents an Encouraging View 

Pilots of L-Commerce marketplaces running around India have yielded encouraging results. There is a growing understanding of data as an asset and digital as a force multiplier leading to population-scale adoption of digital interfaces for all aspects of human life. Local businesses prefer to negotiate terms of engagement that are well suited to organizations locally through the local chambers of commerce. Local digital platforms are showing strong product-market fit with the potential to accelerate wealth creation opportunities locally as the adoption of local digital platforms and L-Commerce marketplaces accelerate.