Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, has been actively engaging in boosting e-commerce exports from the country, leveraging its ‘District as Export Hubs’ initiative. The goal is to promote and enable micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to explore the international markets through e-commerce channels.

Taking this initiative further, DGFT has been collaborating with various e-commerce platforms and other service providers to handhold and do capacity building and training sessions in the identified districts under the districts as export hubs initiative. In a similar collaboration, today DGFT partnered with the global logistics service provider, DHL, through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which will cover 76 districts in three phases, to conduct capacity-building sessions, training, and workshops for making Indian MSMEs export-ready.

During the MoU signing event, Shri Sunil Barthwal, Commerce Secretary, highlighted the importance of e-Commerce ecosystem, and pointed out the strides taken by India to create a digital infrastructure which can be leveraged to encourage MSMEs from rural India to connect to the world market. He also pointed out the recent initiative of Bharat Mart and how such warehousing initiative would further India’s foreign trade. He conveyed his best wishes for the initiative and hoped that this would help Indian entrepreneurs to bridge the gap in knowledge and enter the world of international trade.

While welcoming the partnership, Shri Santosh Sarangi, DG, DGFT highlighted that the objective of this collaboration is to introduce exporters/MSMEs to the digital commerce space so that they get an opportunity to export “Make in India” products, tap international customers and overcome the challenges related to logistics while exporting through the e-commerce route.

Looking forward to this partnership, John Pearson, Global CEO of DHL Express emphasized that DHL is the first international express operator to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT). This partnership with the Government of India will further solidify DHL’s commitment to India and aligns with DHL’s Go Trade program to empower MSMEs in the global market.

DGFT and DHL aim to bring together a team of knowledge experts to assist Indian exporters/MSMEs in the identified districts through handholding sessions and develop a start-up kit for first-time Exporters/MSMEs wanting to go global.

Aligning with the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, in the past few months, DGFT has signed MoUs with Amazon India and Shiprocket covering 20 and 16 districts respectively. These collaborations with e-commerce platforms and service providers have encouraged series of outreach events by DGFT- Regional Authorities to onboard new exporters; promote first-time exporters, and handhold MSME producers to become exporters through cross-border e-commerce sales under the District as Export Hub initiative.

E-commerce export facilitation: MoU to provide capacity building and logistics support enabling MSMEs to enter international markets. A memorandum of understanding establishes an e-commerce export facilitation partnership between the national foreign trade implementing agency and a global logistics provider to support MSMEs across identified districts under the District as Export Hubs initiative by delivering capacity building, training, workshops, expert handholding, and a start-up kit to make exporters export-ready and address logistics challenges in cross-border e-commerce, aligned with the Foreign Trade Policy 2023.