Google in talks to join India’s open e-commerce network ONDC

A man walks past the indication “Google for India” at the company’s annual engineering occasion in New Delhi, India, September 19, 2019. REUTERS/Sankalp Phartiyal/File Image

NEW DELHI, May perhaps 27 (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google is in talks with the Indian authorities to combine its buying products and services with the country’s open up e-commerce network ONDC, two sources acquainted with the matter informed Reuters.

India soft-released its Open Community for Electronic Commerce (ONDC) late past month as the govt attempts to finish the dominance of U.S. providers Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Walmart (WMT.N) in the rapidly-escalating e-commerce industry. browse extra

The authorities estimates the Indian e-commerce marketplace was worthy of extra than $55 billion in gross items value in 2021 and will develop to $350 billion by the stop of this ten years.

ONDC Main Govt T. Koshy told Reuters that Google was one of lots of businesses it was in conversations with to be affiliated with the task.

Google’s talks follow the achievement of its payments small business due to the fact of the government’s initiative for economic transactions, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), claimed one particular of the sources, both of those of whom declined to be identified as they had been not authorised to talk about the matter with the media.

Google’s present buying organization operates solely as an aggregator of listings on the internet and does not have out any get fulfilment like shipping and delivery, which the likes of Amazon do.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on whether it was in talks with the federal government.

“We keep on being dedicated to concentration on the enablement of small and medium organizations to leverage digital for deeper discovery and payments capabilities with Google Shell out,” the spokesperson explained, referring to its payments service.

Associates of the ONDC task, which currently incorporates the likes of Indian fintech firm Paytm (PAYT.NS), will clearly show listings from each and every other on their platforms in research benefits. The government’s goal is to level the participating in field by decreasing the expense of doing enterprise for any seller who wishes to record their products on line.

Some industry executives, on the other hand, have elevated worries around how listings from unique sellers will be prioritised.

“The logic would be that the highest sellers/very best rated sellers will likely get shown 1st, which signifies it will not be a stage-participating in area,” mentioned Mahesh Narayanan, a previous head of Google’s cell advertisements small business in India.

The ONDC programme aims to sign up for 30 million sellers and 10 million retailers on the internet, and protect at least 100 cities and towns by August.

Caesar Sengupta, the main government of economical know-how startup Arbo Works who played a important job in creating Google Shell out in India, claimed he sees large likely with ONDC.

“A person factor ONDC will definitely have to have is a purchaser participant to drive adoption with the masses,” he explained. “You may try to remember that UPI experienced only 17 million transactions per thirty day period in advance of Google Fork out launched and the graph thereafter is a hockey stick.”

Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Krishna N. Das in New Delhi and Paresh Dave in Oakland, California Enhancing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill

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