Google in talks to sign up for India’s open up e-commerce community ONDC

A male walks past the signal “Google for India” at the firm’s yearly technological know-how function in New Delhi, India, September 19, 2019. REUTERS/Sankalp Phartiyal/File Photograph

NEW DELHI, Could 27 (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google is in talks with the Indian authorities to integrate its searching providers with the country’s open e-commerce community ONDC, two resources familiar with the make a difference advised Reuters.

India tender-released its Open up Community for Digital Commerce (ONDC) late last month as the government attempts to close the dominance of U.S. firms Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Walmart (WMT.N) in the fast-rising e-commerce industry. browse much more

The governing administration estimates the Indian e-commerce market place was well worth much more than $55 billion in gross goods worth in 2021 and will mature to $350 billion by the stop of this ten years.

ONDC Chief Government T. Koshy told Reuters that Google was one of lots of organizations it was in discussions with to be affiliated with the task.

Google’s talks abide by the achievement of its payments business for the reason that of the government’s initiative for economic transactions, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), mentioned a single of the sources, both equally of whom declined to be recognized as they were not authorised to discuss the make any difference with the media.

Google’s current searching business enterprise operates only as an aggregator of listings on-line and isn’t going to carry out any get fulfilment like shipping, which the likes of Amazon do.

A Google spokesperson declined to remark on whether it was in talks with the authorities.

“We stay committed to focus on the enablement of compact and medium firms to leverage electronic for deeper discovery and payments abilities with Google Pay back,” the spokesperson mentioned, referring to its payments service.

Companions of the ONDC project, which currently involves the likes of Indian fintech company Paytm (PAYT.NS), will demonstrate listings from every single other on their platforms in look for final results. The government’s goal is to amount the actively playing area by decreasing the price tag of accomplishing small business for any seller who wants to record their merchandise online.

Some market executives, even so, have lifted fears over how listings from diverse sellers will be prioritised.

“The logic would be that the greatest sellers/most effective rated sellers will most likely get shown very first, which implies it will not be a amount-playing industry,” stated Mahesh Narayanan, a previous head of Google’s mobile adverts enterprise in India.

The ONDC programme aims to sign up for 30 million sellers and 10 million retailers on line, and go over at least 100 metropolitan areas and cities by August.

Caesar Sengupta, the main executive of economic know-how startup Arbo Performs who played a significant part in developing Google Shell out in India, reported he sees large probable with ONDC.

“A single matter ONDC will absolutely require is a client participant to drive adoption with the masses,” he stated. “You may perhaps keep in mind that UPI had only 17 million transactions for every month prior to Google Shell 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 Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill

Our Criteria: The Thomson Reuters Rely on Concepts.