Google is in talks to affix govt’s open etail community

New Delhi: Google is in lively discussions with the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and is “exploring” methods to associate with the formidable initiative, a number of folks within the know of the matter, informed ET.

At current, talks are “exploratory” and have spanned throughout totally different companies inside Google together with search and funds, in line with one particular person cited above who mentioned, “there’s a particular curiosity” in participating with the ecommerce community.

A second particular person conscious of the continued discussions mentioned the 2 sides have held a couple of conferences with Google viewing ONDC as a method to discovering companies. “There are a number of potentialities, however it’s but to be finalised,” the particular person added.

The community, which goals to democratise ecommerce by bringing extra kiranas and unorganised retailers on-line, was launched as a pilot earlier this month in Bengaluru and 4 different cities and is predicted to be obtainable in 100 cities countrywide by August.

Responding to ET’s queries on the event, T Koshy, chief government officer (CEO) of ONDC confirmed the talks with Google in addition to with different expertise firms.

“Like all of the biggies, firms like Google, are speaking to us to see what’s the potential manner by which they will take part on this journey,” Koshy mentioned.

A consultant for Google mentioned the corporate has been constantly invested in efforts to assist India’s huge base of small and medium companies construct digital presence and “assist discovery” throughout its platforms and fee capabilities with Google Pay.

“Now we have nothing additional to share at this time limit,” the particular person added.

Google Pay’s two predominant opponents – PhonePe and

have already begun to combine their companies with ONDC. The community’s pilot programme was launched via a purchaser app from Paytm, with the Noida primarily based firm stating that it’s going to pivot to the ONDC community to drive the following stage of ecommerce.

ET reported earlier this month that PhonePe, which is owned by Flipkart and Walmart,
is in advanced stages of integration and will join the ONDC community on the client and vendor sides. “Identical to the unified fee interface( UPI) , we need to construct on an open ecosystem like ONDC whereas leveraging our fee relationship with retailers in addition to customers. We’re actively working with ONDC to launch as quickly as potential,” PhonePe had informed ET.

For Google, partnering with ONDC suits in properly with its acknowledged agenda of digitising small companies. It could additionally slot in properly with the American expertise main’s bigger ecommerce ambitions globally and has the potential to be scaled up worldwide like Tez – which was launched in India after which scaled up as Google Pay. The corporate already has greater than 10 million retailers reside on Google Pay.

Cracking e-commerce

For a number of years now, the search large has been working to reinforce the consumer expertise of procuring on-line by increasing the methods by which a product might be looked for. At its annual I/O software program convention earlier this month, Google showcased the way it plans to let customers discover close by retail merchandise and look at packaging particulars by simply utilizing the cellphone’s digicam.

Becoming a member of fingers with ONDC, which India is pegging as a substitute for break the dominance of e-commerce giants corresponding to Amazon and Flipkart, is probably going to supply impetus to Google’s plans of changing into the go-to vacation spot for procuring.

On its half, Google has been working in the direction of digitising small and medium companies by providing perks corresponding to free web sites and cloud storage. It additionally launched Google Pay for Enterprise in 2019, to handhold such retailers with digital funds and buyer onboarding. It additionally launched MyShop – a function to allow retailers with a fast retailer builder function the place they will add pictures, descriptions, costs inside minutes after which share the hyperlink throughout Google surfaces and social media.

A Bloomberg article revealed on Wednesday famous how Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vp liable for most of Google’s largest companies—search, maps, promoting and extra—is set to crack e-commerce, a market projected to hit $2.27 trillion in 2025 that the Alphabet Inc. division has tried and failed to determine many instances earlier than.

ONDC is an initiative of the Division for Promotion of Business and Inside Commerce, below the Ministry of Commerce. Primarily based on an open-protocol primarily based system, ONDC will permit patrons and sellers to find and transact with one another. Primarily based on the idea utilized by Unified Funds Interface, ONDC can even provide a “decentralised” construction the place patrons and sellers needn’t be on the identical platform to work together.

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