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Agents are 18% of India's internet traffic: ET op-ed urges MCP, ONDC catalogue upgrades and an NPCI agent protocol
Our read
Expect gated, platform-controlled agent access to arrive before open ONDC and NPCI standards do, even as agent traffic keeps rising from about 18% of India's internet.
For operators
About 18% of India's internet traffic is already agents (the ET op-ed's Cloudflare Radar figure), so prioritise clean, structured product catalogues and MCP-ready access, with ONDC catalogue upgrades first, before agent share nears the 50% mark the author calls a reckoning.
Watch
The next Cloudflare Radar readings for India: movement from about 18% toward 50%, or a stall
The report,
Agent traffic is about 39 per cent of the internet and about 18 per cent of India traffic, per Cloudflare Radar, an ET BrandEquity opinion says. It urges India to adopt open protocols like MCP, upgrade ONDC catalogues and launch NPCI's Unified Agent Protocol.
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Channel facts
From the report. Source details below
| Agent traffic share marking a reckoning: | 50 per cent |
|---|---|
| Steps India needs for an agentic web: | 6 |
Signals to track
- An NPCI circular, specification or pilot announcement for the Unified Agent Protocol
- An ONDC announcement of a catalogue schema or enrichment upgrade aimed at agents
- A major Indian marketplace or quick-commerce app launching an MCP server or official agent API, or publicly blocking agents
- Indian retailers reporting agent-originated orders or sessions as a distinct metric
Likely next moves
Our read of what comes next — analysis, not reported by the source.
- ONDC and its network participants are likely to face pressure to enrich catalogue attributes so agents can compare and transact, with sellers on the open network moving first.
- NPCI is likely to give more detail on how agent-initiated payments would be authorised, probably through pilots or consultation before any broad rollout.
- Large marketplaces and quick-commerce platforms may offer controlled agent access through their own APIs or connectors while tightening limits on unsanctioned bots.
- Brands and D2C retailers are likely to start tracking agent traffic as its own segment in analytics and treat product-data quality as a discovery issue.
- Cloudflare is likely to keep publishing Radar agent-traffic data, which will make the 18% India figure and the 50% threshold the benchmark in this debate.
The counter-case
The case against this reading — not reported by the source.
This is an opinion piece, not a market event, and its headline numbers do not show what the framing implies. Cloudflare Radar's 'agent' share most likely counts all automated requests, including AI crawlers, training scrapers, search bots and monitoring tools. It does not count shopping agents acting for consumers. A share of requests is not a share of orders, revenue or even sessions with purchase intent, and bots are cheap to run and generate many requests. The piece's own numbers also undercut its urgency. India's share of about 18% is less than half the global figure of about 39%, which suggests India is behind on agent adoption, not that a 'reckoning' is near. The 50% threshold looks like a rhetorical device, not a modelled tipping point. The six-step prescription (MCP, upgraded ONDC catalogues, NPCI's Unified Agent Protocol) is a wish list. It names no committed adopters, timelines or pilot volumes. Agent-initiated payments also face consent and authentication requirements that could slow any rollout. For a retail desk, the risk is mistaking bot load for demand and treating advocacy for protocols as evidence they will be adopted.
The source
Published
First seen