India’s Textile MSMEs Go Global with Cross-border E-commerce

From linen to traditional wear, India’s MSME textile businesses are exporting to new markets through e-commerce and expanding their customer base, bringing India closer to its 2030 goal of $100 billion in textile exports.

India’s textile industry weaves an unbroken line from its past to future — cited in Kautilya’s Arthashastra as well as in modern-day India’s roadmap to a $5 trillion economy. It is an apt embodiment of the India exports story, combining tradition with new methods, entrepreneurship, and technology.

India is the third-largest exporter of textiles and apparel in the world and the sector’s share (including handicrafts) in the total merchandise exports stood at a significant 10.5% in 2021-22. The country’s textiles exports was the highest ever in FY 2021-22, crossing $44 billion; this value is projected to climb to $65 billion by FY26. The Government of India’s ambition is to ramp this up to $100 billion by 2030, with a long-term goal of reaching $600 billion by 2047. Cross-border e-commerce can contribute significantly to this target.

But these numbers don’t tell the full story. India’s textile story is a tale woven of the entrepreneurial spirit and artisanal prowess of millions of small and medium-scale artisans and weavers. Their exquisite work takes shape as Odisha's Sambalpuri, Kashmir’s Pashmina, Tamil Nadu’s Kanjeevaram, or Andhra Pradesh’s Kalamkaris. With the rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce in the past decade, these arts and crafts are finding a place of pride in the shopping carts of buyers across the world.

Textile districts turn export hubs

Propelled by the Government of India’s Districts as Export Hub (DEH) and One District One Product (ODOP) initiatives, which link local producers in rural and remote districts with global supply chains, India’s textile artisans and MSMEs are moving up the value chain. They are building their own boutique brands, operating digital storefronts on global marketplaces with the help of cross-border e-commerce programs such as Amazon Global Selling, and shipping to the world. Increasingly, a new wave of D2C textile and apparel brands is joining their ranks.

Easy and quick access to global markets, insights, tools, initiatives, and technology solutions has enabled Indian textile and apparel brands to cater to hundreds of millions of international customers in Amazon global marketplaces such as the US, the UK, Canada, the UAE, Germany, and France.

D2C brands find Amazon Global Selling to be a growth and scale accelerator. Sachin Sule, a first-generation entrepreneur, has leveraged the program to quickly establish a global customer base for his brand, SGI Bedding. Today, the brand has its own manufacturing unit in Madhya Pradesh, employing over 275 artisans.

New Delhi-based Handicrafts Home pivoted from its traditional exports approach to cross-border e-commerce, becoming nimbler and more efficient. Since its launch with Amazon Global Selling in 2016, Handicraft Home has seen 8X growth on the Amazon US and Canada marketplaces.

SGI Bedding, Handicrafts Home, Native Fab from Tamil Nadu, Linenwalas from Rajasthan... these are just some of Digital India’s success stories — entrepreneurs weaving technology into their traditional businesses to go global. Exporters from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu lead apparel exports on the program.

Since 2015, Amazon Global Selling has registered over 125,000 exporters on the program who have cumulatively sold more than 266 million ‘Made in India’ products on 18+ Amazon global marketplaces (as at the end of 2023). Amazon is committed to growing this number – the program aims to enable cumulative e-commerce exports of $20 billion by 2025 — across categories such as textiles and apparel, health and personal care, home and kitchen, and more.

The opportunity is transforming textile districts — from Rajkot in Gujarat and Kota in Rajasthan to Gautam Buddh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh and Tirupur in Tamil Nadu — into a network of e-commerce export hubs. This is the textile chapter of the ‘Made in India’ story.

A path to $100 billion in textile exports by 2030

Cross-border e-commerce isn’t just a growth lever for textile brands, but for the country’s overall economy and exports potential. Rachna Shah, Secretary of the Ministry of Textiles, recently announced that the government is focused on promoting products with higher export potential and exploring newer markets to expand opportunities for textile exports.

Additionally, the Government of India runs several focused schemes to drive investment, innovation, and growth of the textile and apparel industry. These include seven Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel (PM MITRA) Parks set up by the Ministry of Textiles; the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme, which supports manufacturing by incentivizing companies based on cumulative sales of domestically manufactured goods; the Samarth initiative, a key skill development program; and the National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM), focused on improving technical education, promoting R&D, and promoting market growth.

Ecosystem partnerships among the government, cross-border e-commerce programs, export promotion councils, trade organizations, academia, etc., to spread awareness about these initiatives and train and build capacity among e-commerce exporters can put India’s textile MSMEs on a fast-tracked path to global growth. For instance, Amazon and the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) have signed an MoU to leverage the DEH initiative and boost MSME exports from India. Amazon and DGFT will focus on educating MSMEs on e-commerce exports and enabling them to sell to customers across the world. Amazon will also enable access to a host of third-party service providers through its service provider network (SPN) that MSMEs can engage with to avail services like imaging, digital cataloging of their products, tax advisory amongst others.

More such enabling partnerships, easing of e-commerce exports rules and procedures around documentation, payments, customs duty, etc., and increasing access to finance can further help Indian MSMEs expand their businesses and build global brands.

By embracing the “limitless possibilities afforded by e-commerce platforms,” India’s MSMEs can transform into a formidable growth engine, says a recent report by Niti Aayog. Cross-border e-commerce offers MSMEs “economies of scope,” Niti Aayog says, with direct access to global marketplaces, regardless of scale and size. It can be the tailwind pushing India closer to the $100 billion textile milestone. The cartons bound for the world are the new symbols of India’s textile industry, of its enduring legacy and bright future.