At present, talks are “exploratory” and have spanned across different businesses within Google including search and payments, according to one person cited above who said, “there is a definite interest” in engaging with the ecommerce network.
A second person aware of the ongoing discussions said the two sides have held a few meetings with Google viewing ONDC as a means to discovering businesses. “There are multiple possibilities, but it is yet to be finalised,” the person added.
The network, which aims to democratise ecommerce by bringing more kiranas and unorganised retailers online, was launched as a pilot earlier this month in Bengaluru and four other cities and is expected to be available in 100 cities countrywide by August.
Responding to ET’s queries on the development, T Koshy, chief executive officer (CEO) of ONDC confirmed the talks with Google as well as with other technology companies.
“Like all the biggies, companies like Google, are talking to us to see what is the possible way in which they can participate in this journey,” Koshy said.
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A representative for Google said the company has been consistently invested in efforts to help India’s vast base of small and medium businesses build digital presence and “support discovery” across its platforms and payment capabilities with Google Pay.
“We have nothing further to share at this point in time,” the person added.
Google Pay’s two main competitors – PhonePe and
have already begun to integrate their services with ONDC. The network’s pilot programme was launched through a buyer app from Paytm, with the Noida based company stating that it will pivot to the ONDC network to drive the next 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 network on the buyer and seller sides. “Just like the unified payment interface( UPI) , we want to build on an open ecosystem like ONDC while leveraging our payment relationship with merchants as well as consumers. We are actively working with ONDC to launch as soon as possible,” PhonePe had told ET.
For Google, partnering with ONDC fits in well with its stated agenda of digitising small businesses. It may also fit in well with the American technology major’s larger ecommerce ambitions globally and has the potential to be scaled up worldwide like Tez – which was launched in India and then scaled up as Google Pay. The company already has more than 10 million merchants live on Google Pay.
Cracking e-commerce
For several years now, the search giant has been working to enhance the user experience of shopping online by expanding the ways in which a product can be searched for. At its annual I/O software conference earlier this month, Google showcased how it plans to let users find nearby retail products and view packaging details by just using the phone’s camera.
Joining hands with ONDC, which India is pegging as an alternative to break the dominance of e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart, is likely to provide impetus to Google’s plans of becoming the go-to destination for shopping.
On its part, Google has been working towards digitising small and medium businesses by offering perks such as free websites and cloud storage. It also launched Google Pay for Business in 2019, to handhold such merchants with digital payments and customer onboarding. It also launched MyShop – a feature to enable merchants with a quick store builder feature where they can add images, descriptions, prices within minutes and then share the link across Google surfaces and social media.
A Bloomberg article published on Wednesday noted how Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president responsible for most of Google’s largest services—search, maps, advertising and more—is determined to crack e-commerce, a market projected to hit $2.27 trillion in 2025 that the Alphabet Inc. division has tried and failed to figure out many times before.
ONDC is an initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, under the Ministry of Commerce. Based on an open-protocol based system, ONDC will allow buyers and sellers to discover and transact with each other. Based on the concept used by Unified Payments Interface, ONDC will also offer a “decentralised” structure where buyers and sellers need not be on the same platform to interact.
