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

A man walks past the signal “Google for India” at the company’s yearly technology party in New Delhi, India, September 19, 2019. REUTERS/Sankalp Phartiyal/File Image

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NEW DELHI, May well 27 (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google is in talks with the Indian government to combine its searching expert services with the country’s open up e-commerce network ONDC, two resources acquainted with the matter explained to Reuters.

India smooth-released its Open up Network for Electronic Commerce (ONDC) late final thirty day period as the federal government tries to conclude the dominance of U.S. corporations Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Walmart (WMT.N) in the fast-escalating e-commerce current market. go through much more

The authorities estimates the Indian e-commerce industry was worth far more than $55 billion in gross products benefit in 2021 and will increase to $350 billion by the close of this 10 years.

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ONDC Main Govt T. Koshy informed Reuters that Google was a person of many providers it was in discussions with to be linked with the job.

Google’s talks abide by the results of its payments enterprise for the reason that of the government’s initiative for economic transactions, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), explained a person of the resources, both of those of whom declined to be recognized as they were being not authorised to go over the issue with the media.

Google’s present browsing small business operates exclusively as an aggregator of listings on the web and does not have out any buy fulfilment like shipping, which the likes of Amazon do.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on regardless of whether it was in talks with the government.

“We keep on being fully commited to concentrate on the enablement of compact and medium organizations to leverage electronic for further discovery and payments capabilities with Google Pay back,” the spokesperson mentioned, referring to its payments provider.

Associates of the ONDC task, which presently includes the likes of Indian fintech business Paytm (PAYT.NS), will demonstrate listings from every single other on their platforms in lookup benefits. The government’s intention is to stage the taking part in industry by reducing the price tag of accomplishing organization for any seller who wants to listing their goods on line.

Some sector executives, nevertheless, have lifted fears in excess of how listings from unique sellers will be prioritised.

“The logic would be that the highest sellers/ideal rated sellers will most likely get exhibited to start with, which suggests it will not be a stage-actively playing industry,” reported Mahesh Narayanan, a former head of Google’s cell adverts enterprise in India.

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

Caesar Sengupta, the chief govt of monetary know-how startup Arbo Works who performed a critical purpose in setting up Google Shell out in India, explained he sees major likely with ONDC.

“1 factor ONDC will absolutely need is a consumer player to drive adoption with the masses,” he claimed. “You may perhaps keep in mind that UPI experienced only 17 million transactions for every month in advance of Google Pay released and the graph thereafter is a hockey stick.”

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Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Krishna N. Das in New Delhi and Paresh Dave in Oakland, California Modifying by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Have confidence in Rules.

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