Indian ecommerce industry to get its own Alibaba?

Great news in the offing for the B2B ecommerce industry. According to this Economic Times news report, an exclusive online portal for exports similar to Alibaba is in the making.

India’s Alibaba

This marketplace is being developed by India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), a trust created by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. The trust works towards promoting ‘Made in India’ goods in the International market.

Once ready, the platform will allow Indian manufacturers and exporters to seal B2B deals online and sell their products to global vendors.

While speaking about this project, an official revealed to ET, “This is a very ambitious project which will add brand equity and no other country has such a portal. This has been in the works for quite some time now.”

Objectives of this project

Main goal is to promote ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skill India’ initiatives. The trust and the commerce ministry wants to make sourcing of Indian products in bulk as hassle free as possible with this portal. It will also enable Indian sellers to expand their market and accelerate business growth.

The IBEF official added, “This is designed keeping Indian players in mind and that any importer should have access to us. Though we are still working on the modalities such as payment mechanism and insurance, the overall sentiment for the project from all departments concerned, is positive.”

The government plans to keep a firm grip on quality of the products traded through the portal and vendor profile, while also ensuring timely shipping and protecting the transactions through insurance.

Beneficial for Indian sellers

At its launch stage, the portal will have 1 lakh sellers on board. Gradually IBEF plans to take the number of sellers to 5 lakh. For the same, a B2B tender is on its way, the official shared.

The success of Alibaba transformed China’s ecommerce industry. The Chinese ecommerce marketplace is a seller centric company that has helped thousands of small businesses to flourish.

Founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma once said, “Our proposition is simple: we want to help small businesses grow by solving their problems through Internet technology. We fight for the little guy. Since our founding in 1999, we have helped millions of small businesses to achieve a brighter future.”

With the Indian Government ready to duplicate Alibaba’s model in India for local manufactures, exporters and sellers, we hope the success is duplicated too.