Today when you go on a Nykaa or an Amazon or a Flipkart you only see products of sellers that are registered on that platform. What if you wanted to shop for dresses and want some from Amazon and some from Nykaa and some from outside all these apps? Government of India has heard your prayer. Under development is an Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), where you can shop across all the apps.

Government will be providing the common gateway and also provide common registration for buyers / sellers, seller’s reputation records can be stored, inter-network operability, and payment process may also be provided. Not just buyers but even sellers also have a problem as they have to register with different apps currently and build customised digital infrastructure for each market platforms. So the sellers may also benefit from the government's ONDC.

Government has registered ONDC as a non-profit company. The open network is starting its pilot in 5 cities Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong and Coimbatore.

To discuss the road ahead for this network, CNBC-TV18 spoke to T Koshy, CEO of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and Arundhati Ramanathan, Deputy Editor of India at The Ken.

Watch video for more.