Google in talks to join India's ONDC network

Google is in talks with the Indian government to integrate its shopping services with the country's open e-commerce network Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). ONDC Chief Executive T. Koshy said that Google was one of many companies it was in discussions with to be associated with the project.

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. Referring to its payments service, a Google spokesperson said, “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.”

Recently, the Indian government soft-launched its ONDC to end the dominance of U.S. companies Amazon.com and Walmart in the fast-growing e-commerce market. The ONDC programme aims to join 30 million sellers and 10 million merchants online, and cover at least 100 cities and towns by August.

The government estimates 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. 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.