Amazon is becoming a member of the Indian government-backed e-commerce initiative that seeks to “democratize” on-line procuring within the South Asian market and amusingly problem the very dominance of firms such because the American retail group.

In an announcement on Friday, Amazon stated it would combine its logistics community and SmartCommerce, its platform to digitize neighborhood shops, to Open Community for Digital Commerce, a non-profit agency arrange by India’s commerce ministry in 2021.

“Amazon’s imaginative and prescient and dedication for India is carefully aligned with ONDC’s goals of digitally enabling small companies, and offering comfort and option to prospects throughout the nation,” stated Manish Tiwary, nation supervisor for Amazon India, in an announcement.

Amazon’s participation within the initiative, backed by the Indian authorities, is outstanding as a result of a part of the ONDC pitch to this point has been that it seeks to disrupt the monopoly of Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart within the Indian e-commerce market.

ONDC is an “interoperable” community, the place patrons and sellers can do enterprise whatever the app or companies they use, disrupting the customers’ reliance on utilizing proprietary companies run by Amazon and Walmart.

With ONDC, New Delhi is in search of to copy the success it has had with UPI, the interoperable cell funds community, that disrupted the walled-garden cell wallets from corporations similar to Paytm and MobiKwik. Paytm is a participant within the ONDC community.

And whereas it’s the early days of ONDC, the mannequin has many issues left to be ironed out, business executives say.

It’s unclear who bears the accountability if a buyer doesn’t get their order delivered, as an illustration. And in contrast to UPI, that noticed New Delhi aggressively promote the digital funds community, ONDC has acquired little public reward and help.

“We’re comfortable that Amazon has a particular roadmap to being part of the ONDC community and is taking its first step in coming in because the logistics companion within the ONDC community which is a globally pioneering thought established with a view to democratise digital commerce in India,” stated T Koshy, MD and CEO of ONDC, in an announcement.