Google to help firms join ONDC with ready APIs

Google has launched an accelerator program for the open network for digital commerce (ONDC) to offer access to artificial intelligence tools for digital sellers. Under this program firms which enable ONDC are eligible to get a grant of $25,000. 

Google will be offering ONDC core and infrastructure application program interface (APIs), with access to Retail artificial intelligence technology and PaLM API to enhance buyer-seller experience on the platform.

Additionally, Google launched Address Descriptors through Google Maps for better serviceability of ONDC orders. Currently, the feature is available in 25 Indian cities, using which customers can find addresses through landmarks and area names.

“The addition of Google Cloud's Accelerator Program reinforces ONDC’s mission to revolutionise the ecommerce landscape, ushering in a new era of efficiency, agility, and customer-centricity. By streamlining the onboarding process through efficient core APIs, this milestone addition to the open network empowers enterprises to focus on their core competencies,” said T Koshy, the managing director and chief executive officer of ONDC.

To be sure, Google has been in talks with the Indian government to integrate its shopping services with ONDC, as reported by Reuters in May. This was on the heels of the success of Google’s payments business on the back of the government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). 

As per a statement made by ONDC’s Koshy’s in April, the government-backed ONDC already has over 31,000 merchants registered for selling over 37 lakh products. 

At the Google I/O Connect event held today in Bengaluru, the company made a series of announcements targeting the Indian developers’ community. After announcing PaLM API and Makersuite in March, Google has now made it available in India. Developers will be able to access state–of-art large language models. 

Additionally, Google will also be open-sourcing the first set of speech data under Project Vaani, comprising over 4,000 hours in 38 languages. Launched in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science last year, Project Vaani aims to create a data corpora of more than 150,000 hours of speech in Indic languages.