The Hindu Business Line : ‘IITF turning focus on B2B’

New Delhi, Nov 18 India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) is making a serious bid to convert its flagship global trade fair from a consumer-oriented thrust to a business-to-business (B2B) fair largely because Indian industry is maturing, the Chairman & Managing Director, Dr Sheela Bhide, said today.

In an interview to Business Line here as the 28th India International Trade Fair, an annual event showcasing India’s development, is under way, Dr Bhide said that ITPO is focusing on B2B model since Indian industry is looking for “a platform for their products and they are not always interested to sell across the counter”.

That is why, prompted by the success of the launch of international business lounge last year, ITPO is hosting a domestic business lounge for Indian companies to interact with other companies/clients for securing orders and business propositions during the course of the two-week fair at Pragati Maidan this time around, she said.

Stating that IIFT has twin objectives, she said foremost, it showcases the development story to its people and foreign visitors and development of every State with a State pavilion in the exhibition.

The second objective is commercial and it is becoming quite an international fair for the simple reason that more international companies are participating.

Good enquiries

Asked whether the volume of business contracts agreed could be quantified, Dr Bhide said that first of all, participants are not willing to give any figure; nor are they in a position to do so because during the two weeks of the fair, a lot of people come, discuss and distribute catalogues. Sometimes, factory visits too take place but the business takes over a period of one year or two.

“By and large, when we ask the participants in the fair, they say that have got very good enquiries. The fact that they have come year in and year out shows that they must have done some cost-benefit analysis and the benefits outweigh costs”, she added.

Giving an instance of how a local entrepreneur making a small machine of Rs 25,000 for recovery of silver from the water in which photo films are washed, she said that the entrepreneur is so overwhelmed by the response that he is unable to cope with the demand, she said.

In another instance, bamboo products from China by an ex-Army entrepreneur has attracted a lot of trade enquiries, she said adding that bamboo in China is slightly different and bamboo in India has got more sucrose content and the Chinese entrepreneur said if these bamboo products are manufactured, “we need to have people who can plant Chinese bamboo” and the entrepreneur is willing to transfer the technology for such bamboo plantation here, she said.

Outsourcing

To a specific query as to whether ITPO could outsource some of its non-core activity so that its focus should stay on course with promoting trade and Indian products to overseas clients, Dr Bhide said that some activities such as security, cleanliness and internal transport to ferry passengers through DTC buses have been outsourced.

She also conceded that the organisation does make profit “as our rates are quite low and we made money on volume”.

She said that the popularity of the fair could be gauged from the fact that even on a working day like Monday, as many as 75,000 visitors had come to the fair. She said the advent of metro rail till the portals of the trade fair ground has vastly improved traffic congestion as private cars are not being used to visit the fair and the purchase of the ticket through metro station has provided people with a concession of Rs 10 less a ticket.

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