Google in talks to join India's open e-commerce network ONDC -sources
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[May 27, 2022] By
Munsif Vengattil, Krishna N. Das and Paresh Dave
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -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.
India soft-launched its Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) late
last month as the government tries to end the dominance of U.S.
companies Amazon.com and Walmart in the fast-growing e-commerce market.
The government estimates
https://www.investindia.gov.in/
sector/retail-e-commerce/e-commerce the Indian e-commerce market was
worth more than $55 billion in gross merchandise value in 2021 and will
grow to $350 billion by the end of this decade.
ONDC Chief Executive T. Koshy told Reuters that Google was one of many
companies it was in discussions with to be associated with the project.
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Google's talks follow the success of its payments business because of
the government's initiative for financial transactions, the Unified
Payments Interface (UPI), said one of the sources, both of whom declined
to be identified 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.
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![](../images/052722PIX/busine37.jpg)
A man walks past the sign "Google for India" at the company's annual
technology event in New Delhi, India, September 19, 2019. REUTERS/Sankalp
Phartiyal/File Photo
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Partners of the ONDC project, which currently includes the likes of Indian
fintech firm Paytm, will show listings from each other on their platforms 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.
Some industry executives, however, have raised concerns over how listings from
different sellers will be prioritised.
"The logic would be that the highest sellers/best rated sellers will probably
get displayed first, which means it will not be a level-playing field," said
Mahesh Narayanan, a former head of Google's mobile ads business in India.
The ONDC programme aims to join 30 million sellers and 10 million merchants
online, and cover at least 100 cities and towns by August.
Caesar Sengupta, the chief executive of financial technology startup Arbo Works
who played a critical role in establishing Google Pay in India, said he sees big
potential with ONDC.
"One thing ONDC will definitely need is a consumer player to drive adoption with
the masses," he said. "You may remember that UPI had only 17 million
transactions per month before Google Pay 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)
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