Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Alphabet Inc's Google is in talks with the Indian government to integrate its shopping services with the country's open e-commerce network ONDC.
In the last month India launched its Open Network for Digital Commerce ONDC as the government tries to end the dominance of U.S. companies Amazon.com and Walmart in the fast-growing e-commerce market.
One of the sources who refused to be named, said Google's talks follow the success of its payments business because of the government's initiative for payments, the Unified Payments Interface, because they were not authorised to discuss the matter with the media.
Google's existing shopping business doesn't carry out any orders fulfilment like delivery, which is something that the likes of Amazon do.
A Google spokeswoman didn't say whether it was in talks with the government.
The spokesperson said that the company's payments service is committed to the enablement of small and medium businesses to leverage digital for deeper discovery and payments capabilities with Google Pay.
Partners of the ONDC project, which includes Indian fintech firm Paytm, will show listings from each other on their platform in search results. The government wants to raise the playing field by reducing the cost of doing business for sellers who want to list their products online.