Beckn: UPI for Mobility & Commerce
Last week I wrote about Apple App Store turning itself into a gatekeeper. App Store ideally should have been a gateway for developers to reach out to iOS users and vice-versa.
In line with that, coming back to India, I will talk about another gateway being built by industry stalwarts. Nandan Nilekani, Pramod Varma, and Sujith Nair have built an open protocol for digital commerce, Beckn, which can be compared with the likes of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for World Wide Web, or GPS for geo-location services.
The objective of Beckn is to aid local commerce in digital space. Beckn decouples the value chain and promotes interoperability between various monolithic value chains at each stage. It defines the common language (protocol) which can be used by machines to understand the aspects of digital commerce like searching for cabs, selecting a menu, or making a payment.
Plainly speaking and at the risk of oversimplification, Beckn protocol allows a computer to “understand and speak” commerce like ‘select an item from the menu’, ‘place an order’ with another computer anywhere on the internet by exchanging open, standardised, machine-readable information.
Beckn Concept Paper
Currently, Beckn has specified architecture for two sectors. First is Mobility and second is local commerce which includes the likes of Kirana stores, Hotels, Restaurants, etc.
In both sectors, lots of parties involved at various stages. Traditional platforms have successfully integrated these into a single monolithic architecture to deliver services to end-users. For example, Uber has integrated UX, Cabs with Drivers, and Payments; Swiggy has integrated UX, Menus, Restaurants, Payments, and Delivery. They have developed their own proprietary protocol to communicate between these layers.
In the traditional scenario, it becomes difficult for new players to enter at any stage in the value chain while existing players become more powerful.
What Beckn brings to the table is an open protocol (interface) which enables one party to talk to another party seamlessly. Moreover, traditional platforms like Uber and Swiggy can continue using their platforms and include Beckn to get to more customers (demand) and providers (supply).
Key Features
Beckn has built-in redundancy, one of the many available Beckn gateways could be used for relaying requests from Beckn App to Beckn Providers.
It is decentralised as there is no governance placed by Beckn. It is more like Internet and less like a Stock Exchange where both have open protocols but one has more centralization and better governance in place.
It has a layered architecture. Government as a stakeholder can put a governance layer on top of Beckn architecture as per the rules and regulations of a region.
Beckn can also be made more sector specific by introducing Beckn compliant schema (format in which data is arranged) on top of core schema in parlance with the requirements of that sector.
Process
Put simply, the entire process could be divided into four sub-steps:
- Demand: Handled by Beckn apps.
- Back-end process,
- Request Relaying: One of the several gateways act as an interface between Beckn Apps and Providers to relay requests.
- Supply: Beckn Providers make their services available on the network.
Nobody can explain the back-end process better than the author of Beckn concept paper himself.
The Beckn Intent messages capture the user’s requirements for search and ordering a commerce service over the Beckn network. Beckn Providers respond to the Intent by responding with their relevant Service or Service(s). The Intent and Service specifications are standardised generic message structures that can be further adopted by sectors to prepare sector-specific Intent and Service message schemas. The Services offered as a response to the intent shall lead to the interactions for selection, confirmation of the order and payment by the customer on the Beckn App and the service confirmation and delivery by the Beckn Provider.
Beck Concept Paper
Let us go through an overview of how pre-paid food delivery might take place with Beckn Architecture.
- Discovering: Consumer would go with his preferred Beckn App. As an analogy, you might prefer to make payment via GPay, or PhonePe but, both would use UPI as an interface and NPCI as a gateway.
- Discovering: She would try to browse through menus of different restaurants. The restaurant would be registered as a Beckn Provider. Technically, the request is broadcasted through Beckn Gateways as intent and is received by the Beckn Providers who supply products or services.
- Discovering: Restaurant, a Beckn Provider, would respond with menu items in a schema (data arranged in a standard way to make it easier for both parties to communicate).
- Ordering: Once the user selects an offering, she would go ahead and try to place the order. This time also there would be a request to Restaurant followed by a request to another Beckn Provider with Payments Solution.
- Payment: Payment Solution would send the payment status response to Restaurant, which will interface with Delivery Service Provider.
- Fulfilment: Last, but not the least, UX at your end would interface with the Delivery Service Provider until your order is delivered.
The Beckn Protocol would reduce the entry barrier and ensure that there is no monopoly in the market. It would lead to a rise of Gig-economy and specialised boutique firms providing specialised services with end-consumer at the centre.
It solves the problem of access and outreach and enables seamless communication between the members involved in any transaction from first to the last mile. It would also bring everyone to a level playing field and ease interoperability.
Use Case: Mobility
More emphasis was being given on mobility in designing the cities than the people themselves. Mobility would always be an important part of our life.
With Beckn in play, you would not need a thousand apps on your device to search for a vehicle. You can use a single interface for multi-modal transport and design journeys suitable to your context like commuting to the office.
The government could also use the data from Beckn gateways for evidence-based planning. They could optimise for the location of bus stops, parking spaces, metro lines and ability to handle traffic at peak and off-peak timings.
Currently, Dunzo and ShopX have partnered with Beckn to integrate the protocol in their platforms which would enable them to reach more consumers and providers.
If you would like me to sum it all up in a one-liner. Beckn is like UPI for mobility and commerce. It integrates all service providers in a single interface.
Some people still do not use UPI though. The challenge for Beckn would be coming to a level where people would prefer apps built using Beckn rather than standalone apps.
I would leave you with food for thought. What if you put WhatsApp into the picture?
WhatsApp can utilise its conversational interface and integrate it with Beckn, which on the other hand would fulfil orders placed with the help of its service providers. This would transform WhastApp into a Super App like WeChat with minimal investment.
