The Digital Archipelago: Why Indonesia is Betting on India’s Open Network Blueprint

JAKARTA, investortrust.id — For decades, the primary challenge facing the 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago was physical connectivity, but a new era has shifted the focus toward a digital opportunity.

At the 12th annual Indonesia Economic Forum, government officials and industry leaders gathered to witness the launch of the Indonesia Open Network (ION), a decentralized digital infrastructure designed to bridge the gap for the nation’s 64.2 million micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

This initiative is not merely a local experiment but a strategic adoption of the "digital public infrastructure" pioneered by India, aimed at making technology available at the lowest possible cost to empower the masses.

Suresh Sethi, Managing Director and CEO of Protean, emphasized that this move represents a foundational step toward building shared digital infrastructure that shapes how markets evolve and how inclusion is achieved at a national scale.

Speaking to a room of policymakers and entrepreneurs, Sethi noted that Protean brings lived experiences from India, where population-scale infrastructure was deployed at unprecedented speed.

"The acceleration was not accidental," Sethi remarked, adding that "it was the result of deliberate choices around architecture, around governance and around public and private collaboration". At the heart of this architecture are interoperable layers that standardize access while allowing applications and business models to compete freely on top of the established rails.

The Indonesian economic landscape mirror's India's structural challenges, specifically a massive MSME sector that contributes roughly 61% of the national GDP yet remains largely sidelined from meaningful digital commerce. Currently, most small merchants face high commissions and dependency on closed, "walled garden" platforms that control consumer relationships and data.

T. Koshy, the Founding Managing Director and CEO of India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), explained that while the internet was built on democratic principles like HTTP and SMTP, e-commerce took a proprietary turn.

The goal of an open network is to unbundle these components, allowing a seller to "onboard once and be visible for everybody," effectively shifting control from the intermediary back to the producer and consumer.

Indonesia's Vice Minister of Communication and Digital, Nezar Patria, made it clear that ION is not intended to be another "super app" but a decentralized network connecting buyers, sellers, and logistics providers through open standards.

This approach addresses the reality that readiness alone does not create scale for small businesses. Shinta Kamdani, Chairman of the Indonesia Employers Association, argued that scalability is the product of readiness multiplied by open digital infrastructure.

Without the latter, MSMEs remain locked in single ecosystems where costs accumulate through dependency. ION aims to convert this preparation into participation and revenue by removing the friction of platform-by-platform onboarding.

The transition, however, requires more than technical protocols; it demands institutional trust and high-level political will. Vikram Sinha, CEO of Indosat, pointed out that India’s ONDC succeeded because it had the personal mandate of the country's highest leadership to fight corruption and eliminate middlemen.

Dr. R.S. Sharma, former Chairman of ONDC, noted that digital monopolies are often harder to break than physical ones, making it essential to create a "platform of platforms" that supports "digitization without disruption". For Indonesia, this means ensuring that mom-and-pop stores can leverage digital tools without being hollowed out by larger players with deeper pockets.

The ambition of ION extends beyond simple retail transactions. Sethi suggested that the same interoperable protocols could eventually support jobs, gig work, and financial inclusion by allowing insurance and credit products to plug into transaction histories with user consent.

As Indonesia works toward its "Golden Vision 2045" to become a top-five global economy, the focus is on becoming digital creators rather than just consumers. In the words of Sethi, "the true success of open networks is not measured by one winner but by millions of empowered participants".