Google (GOOG.O, GOOGL.O) is in talks with the Indian government to integrate its shopping service with India's Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC),media reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. The Indian government launched ONDC last month in an attempt to disrupt the dominance of US companies Amazon and Walmart in India's fast-growing e-commerce market. ONDC CEO T. Koshy confirmed to the media that Google is one of many companies that are discussing participation in the project. A Google spokesman declined to comment.
According to people familiar with the matter, thanks to the Indian government's initiative to unify payment interfaces in financial transactions, Google's payment business has achieved success, and the negotiations to join ONDC are under this background.
Google’s existing shopping business is just an aggregator of online listings, not doing any order delivery like companies like Amazon do.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on whether talks with the Indian government are ongoing. “We remain committed to helping SMEs to explore further using digital technologies and enable payments through Google Pay,” the spokesperson said.
Partners in the ONDC project, which currently include Indian fintech firm Paytm, will show listings on each other’s platforms in search results. The government of India aims to promote fair competition by reducing the cost of doing business for sellers.
ONDC aims to join 30 million sellers and 10 million online merchants and cover at least 100 towns and cities by August.
What will India, with a population of 1.4 billion, bring to Google?
What do you think about this matter?
Does this mean that the 100 billion-level market is beckoning to Google?
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