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Online shoppers in India will soon get to buy a whole range of Australian consumer products such as processed and packaged food, health and wellness goods as well as beauty items on an exclusive web platform.
“The Australian Trade and Investment Commission is getting into an arrangement with e-commerce major Amazon India for showcasing and retailing Australian consumer items in India through an exclusive Australian store on the company’s web-site,” Catherine Gallagher, Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner, Australia, told BusinessLine .
The tie-up with Amazon India is one of the initiatives that will be launched by Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham when he visits India next week leading a major business delegation comprising over 100 representatives as part of the Australian India Business Exchange (AIB-X) programme.
This is the first step in what the Australian Trade and Investment Commission sees as a long-term partnership with Amazon India to promote the best of Australian products to consumers seeking premium food, health and lifestyle products, she added.
Australia has a similar on-going initiative with online retailer Alibaba in China and is now eager to replicate the model in India to give a chance to its boutique companies to get a flavour of the Indian market.
“What we are hoping to do with Amazon India is to increase the speed at which Australian companies, particularly the small mom-and-dad companies, can enter the Indian market. What the partnership will allow us to do is to have a premium Australian site which will have a variety of Australian consumer items. It will have beauty. It will have functional foods, processed food and gluten free items. There will be a lot of different categories,” said Mark Morley, Trade Commissioner-India, Australia, who specialises in the food products sector.
Morley said that while some Australian products are already available on online platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart, there is no exclusive website showcasing Australian consumer products all grouped together be it cheeses, chocolates, beverages or life-style products.
“We have a lot of specialisation. And we think we can easily recruit more companies to be interested in India. Many also want to pursue Make in India as it is far easy to manufacture, package or tailor products once they are in India than it is from Australia,” he said.
AIB-X programme
The AIB-X programme from February 24 to 28 will include meetings and exchanges in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata focussing on sectors including education, agribusiness, resources and tourism, food and wine, energy, health, financial services, infrastructure, sport, and science and innovation.
“The Minister will meet his Indian counterpart (Piyush Goyal) and some other meetings, too, are being lined up,” Gallagher said.
Australia-India trade has grown steeply over the last decade but it is heavily skewed in Australia’s favour.
In 2018-19, India’s imports from the island-nation were valued at $13.3 billion while Australia’s imports from here were only at $3.52 billion resulting in a trade deficit of almost $10 billion.
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