On the 14th World Business Leaders Roundtable, India positioned itself as the next blue ocean for cross-border e-commerce. Mr. William Su Yuqun, Chairman of CCPIT Xiamen, COIC Xiamen, and WTC Xiamen, said that in December, the organisation will host a “Go India” as the third event of CCPIT Xiamen’s B&R Series Event and lead an e-commerce delegation to the India.

Mr. Deepak Bagla, CEO of Invest in India which is the official trade promoting agency in India, overviewed the situation of the market. He said that by 2025, annual global cross-border e-commerce revenues could swell to between $250 billion and $350 billion—up from about $80 billion today. Mr. Bagla felt very confident with the development of India’s e-commerce market, for the country maintains several advantages. First, the overall penetration of e-commerce is relatively low in India, which gives it a large room for improvement. Second, India will become the country with largest and youngest population in the world, with an average age of 35.

In fact, India is fast catching up on cross-border e-commerce — export and import of goods through online channels — with the US, UK, Australia, China and Germany emerging as preferred business destinations. Cross-border e-commerce in India has taken great strides to become three times the size of the domestic e-commerce market. Currently, 2.3% of the online goods sales are coming to India from China.

Big shot like Alibaba Group has been taking the lead, investing Paytm, the Indian counterparts of Alipay, and Snapdeal, the second largest e-commerce company in India.

To be the real blue ocean, however, India still has a long way to go. Unreliable and lengthy transit times, complex and ambiguous return processes, customs Bottlenecks, limited transparency on delivery, price opacity, and limited ability to alter delivery times and locations, sooner or later, these problems will need to be solved one way or another.