Mint Explainer | Can foreign investment in e-commerce take India’s small manufacturers global?

What exactly can export-focused e-commerce change?

The new model could remove some of those fixed costs. Under the framework, a registered exporter-on-record can procure goods from Indian sellers against confirmed overseas orders and take responsibility for export documentation, customs, destination-country compliance, testing and certification, packaging, fulfilment, logistics and reverse logistics. That means a small manufacturer can potentially reach a foreign customer without building all of this infrastructure itself. But the policy has limits. It can lower the cost of entering an export market, but it cannot make a product cheaper, improve manufacturing quality, provide production scale or create demand. It also does not solve working-capital or branding challenges, issues that MSMEs grapple with. The new model lowers the distribution barriers for potential small exporters, but larger hurdles remain.