Challenges, Solutions and Best Practices of Cross-border E-Commerce

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Challenges, Solutions and Best Practices of
Cross-border E-Commerce
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• eUniMart organized a crossborder e-commerce
  workshop in Delhi on June 16 at the Russian
  Center for Science and Culture. Crossborder
  e-commerce has never been easy and eUniMart aims
  are taking Indian sellers to the global market by
  making them aware of the benefits of selling
  globally. This workshop was designed to educate
  and guide the sellers on what is the market
  scenario and what they as Indian sellers should
  concentrate on to make the global market their
  playground. The event was attended by 55 sellers,
  there were 7 presentations and 12 marketplaces
  were featured. The workshop addressed three major
  areas
• Logistics
• Payments
• Translations

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• The hosts started the event by quoting a few
  facts
• India contributes only 0.8 to the cross border
  market and the target is to increase this
  percentage to 10 by 2018.
• Indian sellers need to optimize their price
  behavior to be more competitive.
• The markets that are hungry for e-commerce are
  North America, Europe and the Middle East, and
  surprisingly a majority of countries in these
  regions are non-English speaking and prefer to
  buy products listed in their language only.
• Shayak Mazumdar, the CEO and Co-founder of
  eUniMart went on to talk about how he and the
  other founders (most of them from the e-commerce
  and cross-border marketplace sector) decided that
  it is time to give back to the Indian economy and
  promote Indian made products in the global
  market.

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He went on to speak about the Blue Ocean
Strategy1 and explained how Indian sellers are
poised at a junction where they can influence the
market and sale of competitive products. We also
got to see how the eUniMart platform will assist
sellers in marketing their products, provide
analytics and become a one-stop solution for all
cross-border e-commerce marketplaces. Post this
session, the audience was educated on effective
solutions to the biggest pain area in
e-commerceLogistics. Ravi Manhass, VP Operation
Logistics Management gave a detailed
presentation on the challenges of shipping
products. He also went on to explain that there
is a lot to be desired with respect to the legal
framework for e-commerce exports. An interesting
tip during this session was about ensuring that
all export packages are labeled accurately so
that they are not held up at International
Customs. Again, translation plays a crucial role
in ensuring that there is no miscommunication. He
ended his presentation on a positive note where
he assured the participants that the Government
of India would announce a new policy for
e-commerce exports, which will benefit all
sellers.
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Haneet Kaushal from Ebay, India spoke at length
about the potential, size and growth of outbound
crossborder e-commerce from India. He showcased
an example of a leather jacket manufacturer who
grew from a 3 member to a 50 member team by
exporting his products via Ebay. Ebay also
ensures that language barriers are eliminated and
assists the sellers in providing descriptions in
different languages. They also encourage their
users/buyers to provide feedback in a language of
their choice. Ebay strongly believes that people
will buy what they can read and understand. This
session was aptly followed by an educative
session on how sellers can have a win-win
situation by translating their products for
global visibility and sales. The presentation
emphasized on the importance of localization of
products for increasing conversions. This was
enumerated with proven examples of sellers who
had gone from being small SMEs to large
enterprise sellers through translating their
products into various languages. Sellers were
also given information on how Mayflower can help
them re-write their product descriptions so that
during translation SEO-specific terms can be used
to increase the search visibility of their
products.
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During the discussion, it was clear that the
sellers were keen on understanding the
competition they face in the global markets and
the market potential for their products in these
markets. Mayflower has a unique service aptly
named Competitive Intelligence that helps
collect, consolidate and analyze data from
competition/other sellers in various
geographies. This data is then used to strategize
and derive solutions for the global market.
Finally, sellers were given an exclusive preview
on how domain based corpus, AI powered machine
translation services with the proofreading, and
editing of content by e-commerce subject matter
experts (SMEs) can propel them towards global
success. Payments and secure transfer of money is
something that is always of concern to the
sellers. Gaurav Shisodia, Director Business
development, Payoneer spoke about the various
risks and challenges associated with repatriating
payments from across various markets.
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He also focused on the advantages of Payoneer
over other services. He went on to provide an
example of how a seller with exclusive products
failed to succeed in the European market because
they selected a payment portal that was not
localized. The buyer did not feel secure to pay
through a portal that did not provide an
interface in their language. The final session
again touched upon logistic, which seems to be
the elephant in the room. Sanjeev Choudhary, VP
International DTDC Express Ltd. spoke at length
about both inbound and outbound logistics from
India. Sanjeev also answered many questions on
the different shipping methods, regulations
surrounding logistics and the best practices as
well as cost effective methods in logistics. The
session ended with Shayak and Dibyendu
summarizing the best practices, challenges,
solutions and the future of cross-border
e-commerce. The participants also expressed their
views on global selling and felt reassured that
eUniMart was available with all its partners to
provide the best solutions to make them global
market winners.
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Thank You...