Signals a shift toward conversational commerce and AI-driven shopping platforms, which may soon impact retail distribution channels.
What Is Google Testing With Flipkart In Gemini?
Google is testing direct purchases from Walmart-owned Flipkart inside Gemini and AI Mode for shoppers in India. A Buy button on select Flipkart product listings opens a Flipkart checkout flow without leaving the AI interface.
The early test covers a limited group of users and a small selection of products, including smartphones, electronics, and mobile accessories. Other users continue to see regular Flipkart listings in the same surfaces with no option to buy, so two shoppers in India can run the same search and see a Buy button or a plain listing.
Google plans a broader rollout later in October, ahead of India’s festive shopping season, and TechCrunch reported the test after reviewing the experience and speaking with people familiar with the matter.
Gemini and AI Mode are moving from answering shopping questions to hosting the purchase itself.
Can You Buy Flipkart Products Inside Gemini?
Yes, if you are in the test group, and the checkout runs on Flipkart’s side of the glass. Select users tap the Buy button on select listings, and a Flipkart-branded checkout flow opens inside the AI interface.
The reporting rests on people familiar with the matter and an experience TechCrunch reviewed. Google would not share specifics, telling the outlet it is “always testing new features and experiences to help people discover and connect with businesses more easily.”
The claim that survives scrutiny is narrow but real: buying inside the AI interface works today for a limited group in India, and the wider release has a date.
The buy button is live, and the October rollout widens it.
How Is Buying Through Gemini Different From The Flipkart App?
On Flipkart’s app or site, a merchant wins the sale with a listing, and the buyer browses and checks out on the merchant’s own surface. Inside Gemini and AI Mode, a merchant wins the sale by being the answer the AI gives, and the checkout completes inside the AI interface.
Google built toward this moment in stages. In January it introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents handle discovery through checkout, and TechCrunch reported the launch at the National Retail Federation conference with backing from companies including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart.
The protocol has since grown capabilities such as transferring items to a retailer’s site to complete a purchase, which Google documents on its retail blog. This Flipkart test brings up a Flipkart-branded checkout instead, and Google has not said what technology powers it.
Inside Gemini, the product the AI reaches for first wins the sale.
The shopkeeper stacks the shelf and sets the prices before the doors open. Across town, a buyer types one sentence into Gemini, taps the Buy button inside the answer, and pays through a checkout that skipped the storefront. The sale took seconds, and the shop’s name appeared nowhere in it.
The shop did nothing wrong, and it still missed the sale, because the buyer decided inside the AI’s answer before the shop entered the picture. Google widens this test across India in October, a market with more than 1 billion internet subscribers.
If you sell through pages you own, your shelf space now sits inside someone else’s answer, and the October rollout makes that shelf bigger.
Who Does Google’s Flipkart Test Affect?
Select shoppers and sellers in India are affected today, and the mechanism reaches any business whose customers can describe what they sell to an AI. India is the world’s second-largest internet market, with more than 1 billion internet subscribers.
Google invested about $350 million in Flipkart in 2024 as part of a funding round led by Walmart, taking a minority stake alongside its technology partnership. TechCrunch reported the investment at the time.
Google and rivals including OpenAI are moving past answering shopping queries and recommending products toward a direct role in online purchases, so the Flipkart test is one move in a wider market shift. Google also publishes guidance for winning AI search-powered shoppers in India, so the company’s own materials treat the shift as durable.
The selling infrastructure behind your funnel, from landing pages to checkout, can run on tools you control, and an all-in-one platform that bundles funnels, email marketing, and checkout for solopreneurs is one way to keep that stack in-house.
If an AI can complete a purchase in your category, your distribution plan now includes a channel you don’t control.
What Should You Do About Gemini AI Shopping Now?
Audit how your product category surfaces inside AI assistants this week, because October is the next milestone. Open Gemini and the assistants your customers use, then record what comes back when a buyer describes your product. Do the same check in AI Mode, because Google treats both surfaces as one shopping flow in this test.
If a competitor’s catalog fills the answer, that gap is measurable today. Map how much of your revenue depends on a page you own, because a dollar arriving through one of those pages is a dollar an AI checkout can reroute.
Close the gap while the test is still limited to India.
Source: TechCrunch AI
