UP govt to tie up with eBay for giving MSME exports an e-commerce push

Contract to be signed in next few weeks; deals with Alibaba, Flipkart are also in the pipeline

The Uttar Pradesh government has planned to partner US-based ecommerce company eBay for boosting the exports of the state’s indigenous products and handicrafts.

A team of eBay officials has given a presentation to the state Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) department regarding the export of UP’s product line of indigenous products under the Adityanath government’s flagship ‘one-district-one-product’ (ODOP) scheme.

“A contract with eBay will be signed in the next few weeks. Under the deal, eBay would provide a global marketing platform to the ODOP scheme in order to boost our MSME export potential,” UP MSME principal secretary Navneet Sehgal told Business Standard in Lucknow today.

The San Jose, California-based eBay facilitates both consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales globally through its dedicated website.

Traditionally, each of the 75 districts in UP are famous for their unique products and crafts such as Varanasi (Banarasi silk sari), Bhadohi (carpet), Lucknow (chikan), Kanpur (leather goods), Agra (leather footwear), Aligarh (lock), Moradabad (brassware), Meerut (sports goods) and Saharanpur (wooden products).

Launched in 2018, the ODOP scheme is aimed at reviving UP’s indigenous industries through financial, marketing and training support with the help of banks, knowledge partners and private marketing entities, including ecommerce.

Meanwhile, the state government is in the process of tying up with other e-commerce majors as well, including Alibaba and Flipkart, for the marketing of ODOP products. The state had already partnered with e-commerce giant Amazon for the marketing of indigenous products, including ‘UP Khadi’.

In fact, the draft for the proposed contract with Alibaba is ready and is currently with the state law department for vetting, Seghal said adding the process would soon be finalised.

Nearly 350 ODOP units are already onboard Amazon and had collectively netted sales worth Rs 1.23 crore during 2018-19 financial year.

Besides, the Adityanath government has signed agreements with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) for enabling the state’s MSMEs raise capital from the market. “So far, four or five companies have raised funds from the stock exchanges and we want to encourage more enterprises to follow suit,” Sehgal had said earlier.

Targetting to the hit the $1-trillion economy mark by 2024, UP is also framing a new export policy to give impetus to the industrial sector, including startups. The state government has engaged the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) to prepare the draft of the proposed policy.

With Uttar Pradesh's MSME sector accounting for 80 per cent of exports worth Rs 1.14 trillion in 2018-19, the new export policy would by and large serve the interests of the sector, which contributes to more than 60 per cent of the state’s industrial output.

UP is poised to hit an MSME count of 14 million by 2021-22, up 50 per cent from nine million in 2017-18.