Some 3-5 years ago, there would be a handful of SME export centres in India, like the Jaipur belt, the Punjab-Ludhiana belt, the Delhi belt and Mumbai belt. This was pretty much what eBay catchment area was, he said. But now, a wider pool has opened up. “If you take just jewellery as an export item, which is one of our largest categories, it used to be Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, and Surat to an extent. But now you have folks across India coming on to the platform and selling things like pearls from Charminar in Hyderabad. Then you have various other products like Bhadohi carpets, chicken karigari from Lucknow, etc,” he said.
The product categories have gone beyond fashion and electronics. Naini pointed out that interesting items exported by small sellers in India include camera gimbals, which work as mounts for cameras, from Himachal Pradesh and microscopes from Maharashtra. “In fact, one of our ex-colleagues started selling comics and old magazines such as Tinkle comics, Stardust, old Bollywood magazines overseas. These are collectibles which have a lot of value.”
On India-made products, Naini said that more than finding demand, creating demand was a bigger issue.
E-commerce exports from India have gained special attention since the government’s new foreign trade policy (FTP) had a whole section on this, he said.The government has doubled the value limit for exports to Rs 10 lakh per consignment. It also proposed creating a designated zone with a warehousing facility for exporters for stocking, returns and customs clearance process. The new FTP has come after eight years.Naini said one of the reasons the new FTP was delayed was because the government wanted to include a chapter on e-commerce exports. “We will now have regulations/guidelines for courier companies, the limits have increased from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh for export consignments, jewellery now can be exported through courier. You have various other mechanisms for exporting through e-commerce, for all the things we already were doing. It is now formalised within the policy framework,” he said, adding that this indicated e-commerce exports were growing in India.Putting goods made by SMEs on an online platform has helped many small sellers do away with the expense of visiting trade shows aboard. “They would have to set up booths, set up middlemen and then work on a 90-180-day credit period. Compared to that, e-commerce exports are a cakewalk. There are 190 countries across the world. Not many offline exporters would have exported to even three-four countries. Now, we have sellers exporting to 20-30 countries. That is the power of e-commerce,” he said.
The eBay general manager highlighted that the awareness level of e-commerce exports is going up significantly. When asked if the pandemic had any role to play in it, he said it might have just accelerated the journey, but this was on the way. “It has been a journey, and the pandemic has accelerated the journey. The digital awareness levels and the e-commerce penetration levels have gone up at least 20-30% in one year. Earlier, it would have gone up to 10-15%. Apart from that, I think it is a concerted effort of CBIC, FIEO and other government agencies.”
To take e-commerce further, eBay has been closely working with India Post. eBay-India Post booths have been operating across Jaipur, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, and Mumbai for some five years.
