Google in talks to become member of ONDC, India’s open e-commerce network

NEW DELHI: Google is in talks with the Indian government to integrate its shopping services with the country’s open e-commerce network ONDC, According to the sources.

Late last month, India soft-launched its Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) in an attempt to break Amazon.com and Walmart’s monopoly on the fast-growing e-commerce business.

According to the Indian government, the e-commerce market in India was worth more than $55 billion in gross merchandise value in 2021, and is expected to reach $350 billion by the end of the decade.

T. Koshy, the ONDC’s chief executive, told Reuters that Google was one of many corporations with which the organisation was in talks about collaborating on the initiative.

According to one of the individuals, Google’s negotiations follow the success of its payments business as a result of the government’s financial transaction programme, the Unified Payments Interface.

Both sources declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media about the topic.

Google’s current retail company functions primarily as an online aggregator of listings and does not provide order fulfilment or shipping, as Amazon does. A Google spokeswoman said the company was not in talks with the government.

“We remain committed to focus on the enablement of small and medium businesses to leverage digital for deeper discovery and payments capabilities with Google Pay,” the spokesperson said, referring to its payments service.

The ONDC project’s partners, which include Paytm, an Indian finance startup, will display listings from each other’s platforms in search results.

The government’s goal is to level the playing field for every seller who wants to offer their products online by lowering the cost of doing business.

By August, the ONDC programme hopes to have 30 million sellers and 10 million merchants selling online in at least 100 cities and towns.