Google in talks to join India’s open e-commerce network ONDC: Reports
Alphabet Inc’s Google is in talks with the Indian government to integrate its shopping services with the country’s open e-commerce network ONDC, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Late last month India soft-launched its Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) as the government tries to end the dominance of U.S. companies Amazon.com and Walmart in the fast-growing e-commerce market.
Google’s talks follow the success of its payments business because of the government’s initiative for financial transactions, the Unified Payments Interface, said one of the sources, both of whom declined to be named as they were not authorised to discuss the matter with the media.
Google’s existing shopping business works solely as an aggregator of listings online and doesn’t carry out any order fulfilment like delivery, which the likes of Amazon do.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment on whether it was 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.
Partners of the ONDC project, which currently includes the likes of Indian fintech firm Paytm, will show listings from each other on their platform in search results. The government’s aim is to level the playing field by reducing the cost of doing business for any seller who wants to list their products online.
The ONDC programme aims to join 30 million sellers and 10 million merchants online, and cover at least 100 cities and towns by August.
(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dear Reader,
Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.
We, however, have a request.
As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.
Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.
Digital Editor
