ONDC COO Vibhor Jain Takes Charge As Acting Chief Executive

SUMMARY

Jain will be taking over the executive responsibilities from the 8-member executive team, which was set up following the exits of key management personnel

The new acting CEO, Jain, who also heads ONDC's network governance, was also a part of the committee

While CEO T Koshy resigned on April 10, CBO Shireesh Joshi stepped down on March 13

Amid rumblings in its top deck, state-backed network ONDC has announced that its current COO Vibhor Jain will be taking up the role of acting CEO with immediate effect. While the network continues to look for its new managing director and CEO, Jain will be taking over all the executive responsibilities of ONDC from now on.

Thus, with this, the network will effectively disband the eight-member executive team which was set up to oversee operations post the exit of ONDC’s key management personnel. While CEO T Koshy resigned on April 10, CBO Shireesh Joshi stepped down on March 13.

While the eight-member committee was being led by senior vice president (VP) Nitin Nair, other key officials, tech head Supriyo Ghosh, senior VP – financial services Hrushikesh Mehta, senior VP-network expansion Marichi Mathur, HR head Deepti Pandey and senior VP- finance Krishan Agarwal were a part of it.

The new acting CEO, Jain, who also heads ONDC’s network governance, was also a part of the committee.

“The executive committee has done a commendable job of guiding ONDC during a critical phase of its journey. However, with several key strategic decisions underway, it is imperative to have a single point of leadership to drive cohesive execution,” ONDC’s founding member and Protean eGov Tech’s CEO Suresh Sethi said.

Prior to joining ONDC in the role of a strategic advisor in 2021, Jain served as the director of air quality management company Atlanta Healthcare for close to eight years. Important to note that he cofounded the healthcare venture in 2016 and was its CEO till 2017.

With Jain taking up the reins, ONDC would look to put the uncertainties over its leadership in the back burner. The volatility in the leadership, which the network dubs as a transition phase, began after Koshy stepped down from his role of founding MD and CEO while continuing to retain the position of director since April.

Speaking to Inc42 shortly after his departure, Koshy opined it was the right time for him to step down as several milestones in transaction volumes and seller onboarding had been achieved.

“If not sizable, we have initiated an idea, set a stage for alternative stakeholders in digital commerce to access wider markets and build products/services on top of an open-source network. This has never happened in India’s digital commerce industry,” Koshy told us then.

ONDC, short for Open Network for Digital Commerce, is a section-8 company aimed at democratising digital commerce and enabling smaller businesses to connect with buyers through digital platforms.

Currently, the network is live in over 616 cities and is being used by 7.6 Lakh sellers or service providers operating in domains like food and beverages, groceries, financial services, mobility, among 13 others.

Founded in December 2021 with the Quality Council of India and Protean eGov Technologies as founding members, ONDC counts Kotak Mahindra, Axis Bank, SIDBI, ICICI, among others as its investors.

Besides, it also counts Ministry of MSME’s joint secretary Ateesh Singh and DPIIT joint secretary Sanjiv as the members of its board.

While the network was envisaged to act as a disruptor in the Indian ecommerce market by avoiding chances of monopolisation, its scale of adoption has been questionable till now.

For instance, the network crossed the 200 Mn transaction milestone about 3 years after starting operations in January 2023. Of this, ONDC saw total transactions of about 150 Mn in the year.

The network also seems to be struggling on the financial front. Its saw its losses skyrocketed 310% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 195.6 Cr in FY24 owing to a substantial rise in its marketing budget, which increased to INR 91.7 Cr from INR 3.3 Cr in FY23.

Although Koshy denied reports on ONDC missed transactions & revenue milestones, while speaking to Inc42 last month, he noted that any transformative idea in a particular industry takes several years to shape and further more time to be accepted broadly.

“We did not anticipate in the first year of ONDC being made open to the public that we would cross 50 Mn transactions but we did so. We are anticipating 150 Mn transactions in 2025 alone and by all means this is a huge leap,” he then said.