Pawan Gupta, founder and CEO of Connect2India, and an entrepreneur with expertise in global trade and technology in an email interview with Zee Business Online, talks about how to start export, import trade in India, various problems faced by the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) while exporting their goods. 

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1. What are the major pain points of Indian SME manufacturers looking to export?
Indian SME manufacturers are not able to export because of multiple reasons. For example, finding and qualifying global trade counterparts is a big challenge. Further, in the absence of any trade intelligence and detailed trade analytics, the cost of identifying the wrong target product, country or trade counterparts in global trade is really high.

Further, global trade barriers such as lack of reliable data on overseas markets, inability to contact potential overseas customers, unfamiliarity with export rules, procedures; documentation, lack of trained export staff for trade facilitation, difficulty in identifying foreign business opportunities, insufficient access to export finance etc. are difficult to overcome for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with limited knowledge, information and resources available. Additionally, the lack of a credible platform to identify and verify global opportunities, limited access to trade intelligence and market research, and the high cost of trade information have been dissuading SMEs to enter into the unchartered territories of global markets.

At present there are only workarounds such as trade fairs, trade agencies, consulting companies, and market research companies etc. and these existing solutions/approaches are tactical, manual, expensive and prone to error with no focus on sustained or strategic growth.

2. How important is it for SMEs to get into global trade?
The government aims to bolster India’s march towards becoming a USD 5 trillion economy and boost Indian global trade to USD 2 trillion in the next few years. However, achieving such high growth will require exceptional structural changes in all sectors of the economy, especially the SME sector which is the backbone and lifeline of our economy.

3. What are the future opportunities for SME exporters in overseas trades?
According to WTO, the world export of WTO-member countries itself was at $24 trillion last year and is expected to grow 4 to 5 percent per year. This means, more demand in the global markets, which eventually means, more opportunities for SMEs to sell their product and take advantage of the vacuum between current supply and foreseen world demand.

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www.connect2india.com. As part of the packages, Connect2India offers end-to-end solutions including worldwide trade demand, trade analytics, product competitive analysis, finding trade counterparts, global visibility set-up, arranging and executing export/import orders, etc.

6. What output can an SME expect if once they get on board with you?
We enable SMEs to start and grow their export/import with our end-to-end solutions. The company’s single most important focus since the start has been on providing ‘value’; and that is what everyone at Connect2India strives towards delivering. Connect2India has a strong business fundamental to provide real tangible ‘value’ to their customers and enable extremely sophisticated trade functionality that is easy to use.

With our vision to be most trusted integrated global trade platform, Connect2India focuses on “100 percent customer success” as its core principles and ultimate business objectives to make global trade safe, easy, and smart for end-to-end export/import.