eBay India seeks 'exporter' status for domestic retailers selling abroad

Online marketplace eBay India on Wednesday said the government should grant 'exporter' status to its retailers selling their products abroad, so that they can avail the benefits and facilities given to domestic exporters.

Speaking on the sidelines of the launch of 'Online Business Index' here, eBay India Managing Director Latif Nathani said such retailers should be identified as exporters as they are contributing to the Indian economy.

"There should be recognition of this sector which is contributing so much in terms of India's growth but the government is not recognising it as exporters and they are not getting the benefit of exporters in terms of documentation, tax breaks," Nathani said, adding that several representations have been made before the government for it.

A domestic exporter enjoys variety of export incentives that include cheap credit, less paper work and fiscal incentives.

"Similar benefits should also go to the retail exports. If they are recognised as exporter they would get custom benefits of up to USD 25,000. Single page of documentation would help as they all are small business house and do not have staff to go through these regulations and documentations," he added.

eBay India has recently entered into an MoU with the Federation of Indian Export Organisations. According to the online business index launched by eBay today, entrepreneurs are exporting apparels, collectibles, jewellery, home decor, perfumes, cosmetics and health products. Jewellery and apparels constitute 81 per cent of the total exports.

He further said that India has a huge opportunity in mobile commerce and the company plans to invest in multiple ways in this segment. "We have made a lot of investments in mobile commerce. We have presence on the mobile web and have mobile applications for Android. At present, we are selling one product every minute on mobile," he said.

However, Nathani refused to reveal the share of revenues from mobile commerce in India. On its global rival amazon.com's full scale foray into the Indian e-commerce space, Nathani said the company is confident over the experience it has got in the last nine years in the Indian market.

"The e-commerce market in India has widened. It is a very vibrant sector and there are a lot of new entrants in the last nine years. Many new companies (Amazon) are entering as well. We feel very confident of what we have learnt over the last nine years," he said.

When asked whether eBay would have advantage over amazon.com in the Indian market, Nathani said "absolutely".

eBay has introduced a new system called 'Paisa pay', which is an escrow account, and routes the the payment between a buyer and seller. A seller receives payment after certain time when the buyer has received the product.