India's e-commerce ecosystem is about to explode in the near future as exports may touch $200 billion during the next six-seven years from the current $1.2 billion, said Santosh Kumar Sarangi, director general (DG), Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) at an event on Friday.
Addressing the ‘E-commerce Exports’ conference, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), he emphasised on the immense potential of e-commerce exports.
His forecast is backed by the huge product diversity, product innovation and the ability of Indian entrepreneurs to gauge requirements of specific markets and offer customised products.
“Currently, India only exports a fraction of what China does in the e-commerce sector. In the next six-seven years, we should be able to do around $200 billion of e-commerce exports. (For that) we need to bring about a lot of changes in the way logistics is handled in India and the way policy making happens. Also, the way the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) looks at e-commerce exports. In all of these, we have to make a lot of changes,” Sarangi said.
Besides, Sarangi also asserted that India’s e-commerce export ecosystem will evolve in a rapid manner and play a major role in realising the target of $2 trillion of exports in the days to come.
Further, he also said that the DGFT has taken a number of initiatives along with other regulatory agencies to ease e-commerce exports.
He listed the four key elements in the e-commerce business — logistics, e-commerce service platform providers, international payment systems and regulatory agencies. These agencies include the RBI, department of revenue and DGFT, among others.
“However, in order to achieve these export levels, there has to be a change in the mindset of the regulatory agencies as well, as they are still geared towards the old B2B models. In the course of time, we also expect the fintech sector in India to play a key role in providing innovative payment solutions and more importantly, cost effective payment solutions,” Sarangi added.
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He also stressed on creating awareness and educating exporters to conduct the e-commerce business in a fair and ethical manner.
“Along with creating mass awareness among exporters, there is a need to create a pool of mentors, who will act as the fulcrum in handholding and guiding potential exporters in India,” he added.