Amazon is becoming a member of the Indian government-backed e-commerce initiative that seeks to “democratize” on-line purchasing 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’s going to 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 intently aligned with ONDC’s targets 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 up to now 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 consumers and sellers can do enterprise whatever the app or companies they use, disrupting the shoppers’ reliance on utilizing proprietary companies run by Amazon and Walmart.

With ONDC, New Delhi is searching for to copy the success it has had with UPI, the interoperable cell funds community, that disrupted the walled-garden cell wallets from corporations akin 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, trade executives say.

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

“We’re glad 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 accomplice 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.