The action comes after a slew of well-known exits from ONDC, including the resignation of founder and CEO Thampy Koshy in April 2025.
Rohit Lohia to Lead
Rohit Lohia, who is now Senior Vice President of Paytm (One97 Communications), is probable to be named the next Chief Business Officer (CBO) of the retail company by the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). Sources with knowledge of the situation informed Moneycontrol that the decision coincides with changes in the network’s senior management.
Lohia has contributed to strategy, expansion, and business operations at Paytm. He is also a board member of QorQl and Paytm Money.
Leadership Changes Shake ONDC
The action comes following a slew of well-known exits from ONDC. In April 2025, founder and CEO Thampy Koshy resigned after three years in charge, transferring duties to an executive committee consisting of eight members. In the meanwhile, independent director Arvind Gupta just left, and previous CBO Shireesh Joshi resigned in March 2025.
Regarding the CBO appointment, ONDC chose not to comment. Moneycontrol did not get a response from Paytm. ONDC promoted COO Vibhor Jain to Acting CEO in order to stabilize the ship.
ONDC Retail Faces Decline
The network is going through a difficult period for its retail division at the time of Lohia’s hiring. Moneycontrol examined the company’s publicly available statistics, which showed that ONDC recorded 17.94 million transactions in August 2025—a 2.7% increase from July. With 2.35 million logistics orders and 11.81 million rides, mobility and logistics were the main drivers of the growth.
Retail, on the other hand, continued to struggle with 3.76 million transactions, a significant decline from 6.1 million in August 2024.
Retail Decline Signals Shift
Retail, logistics, and mobility are the three categories into which ONDC divides its transactions. While logistics mostly relates to delivery fulfillment, mobility includes ride-hailing and public transportation tickets, and retail comprises orders for food, clothes, and gadgets made via buyer applications.
Retail used to be ONDC’s main source of growth, thus its recent continuous decrease represents a dramatic turnaround.