According to media reports, Google has launched Google Shopping, an online Shopping service, in India to take advantage of the country’s booming digital economy.
The tech giant said last week that online shoppers in India will now be able to browse special offers on the home page of its Shopping Shopping service. This is a mobile-friendly web app. A new “shopping” option has emerged on Google Lens, an image recognition app for Google search engines and images.
Google’s shopping tool allows users to search for bargains from a wide variety of retailers. It is reported that the Amazon and Wal-Mart’s Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart and other retailers special offers will appear in Google’s launch in India’s online shopping services.
“India has the second highest number of Internet users in the world, and this number is growing. ” Surogit-Chatterjee, vice president of product management at Google Shopping services, said in a blog post in Thursday, “while 400 million Indians are currently online, less than one-third are shopping online. ”
Google says users will be able to search for products in English and Hindi. It will receive revenue from merchants’ advertising and consumers’ shopping spending commissions.
India has more than 1.3 billion people and its digital economy is growing rapidly.
Technology companies such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Paytm have reshaped India’s e-commerce industry. India’s e-commerce market could reach $150 billion by 2022, according to a study by Nasscom, a consulting firm at the Indian software and Services Enterprise Industry Association, and PwC.
Amazon, meanwhile, is trying to seize on the trend. The company bought a stake in local rival Stopers Stop last year. The company is also understood to be close to completing its acquisition of a stake in future retail.
In addition, Google, in partnership with private equity firm Samara Capital, acquired more retail chains for the Aditya Birla Group in September.
Flipkart, which was acquired by wal-mart in May, is India’s dominant online retailer, with 100m users and 100,000 merchants on its platform.
The launch of Google’s online shopping service in India marks Google’s further foray into e-commerce and the start of a major us technology company’s further expansion in India.
However, Google’s Shopping Shopping service has been under regulatory pressure from the European Union. The European Union fined Google 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) last year for alleged antitrust violations. The EU argues that Google has stripped consumers of their options by directing users of its search engine to its shopping platform.