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Rohil

India’s exports to China reached $19.47 billion in FY2025–26, up 36.62% year on year, according to India’s embassy in Beijing. Imports from China stood at $131.63 billion, underscoring the scale of the trade imbalance.

A Global Times commentary argues that India could expand exports by supplying more of the raw materials, components and intermediate goods used by Chinese manufacturers. It also advocates closer industrial integration, with Chinese inputs supporting Indian manufacturing competitiveness. These are the article’s recommendations, rather than announced policy changes.

The bigger signal: export growth depends on finding a place in production networks.

For Indian manufacturers, the strategic question is where their products meet a recurring industrial requirement. Becoming a dependable supplier involves matching specifications, qualifying products and sustaining delivery performance across repeat orders.

Why it matters

The operating implication is to assess opportunities at the product and buyer level. Addressable demand, market-access requirements, margins and payment terms will determine whether stronger trade translates into sustainable business.

The export momentum creates a reason to investigate. Building commercially durable supply-chain relationships will require evidence of competitiveness in each target segment.

Source:GlobalTimes

Rohil

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s economic agenda is targeting practical barriers to regional trade. At its October 20 meeting in Dushanbe, heads of government adopted the 2026–2030 action plan for multilateral trade and economic cooperation, alongside discussions on transport, finance and the digital economy.

India’s priorities include simpler customs procedures, paperless trade, electronic document exchange and stronger multimodal connections. It has also called for supply-chain cooperation across agriculture, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and electronics.

The bigger signal: connectivity depends on how efficiently borders work.

For businesses, the operating implication is that transport infrastructure and trade procedures must improve together. Additional routes offer limited predictability when documentation, clearance and payments remain difficult to coordinate.

Why it matters

Exporters and manufacturers should watch for implementation milestones: electronic documents accepted across borders, simpler customs requirements, more accessible trade finance and measurable reductions in transit time.

The action plan establishes a cooperation framework. Its commercial value will emerge through changes businesses can use to move goods more reliably and at lower cost.

Source: AsiaPlusNews

Rohil

Japan and Bangladesh are expanding their Bay of Bengal Industrial Growth Belt initiative, bringing the prospect of stronger links with Northeast India, Nepal and Bhutan into focus.

According to The Economic Times, the two countries have agreed to upgrade the initiative launched in 2014 into “Big-B for Shared Prosperity.” Central to the plans is Bangladesh’s Matarbari deep-sea port, being developed with Japanese assistance, alongside ambitions to strengthen regional transport and supply-chain networks.

The bigger signal: a port’s value depends on the network around it.

For Northeast India, the potential lies in stronger connections to maritime trade through Bangladesh. The operating implication is that port infrastructure, inland transport and cross-border processes must work together before businesses can translate connectivity into dependable shipping options.

Why it matters

Manufacturers and logistics providers serving the region have a developing corridor to watch. Its commercial usefulness will depend on transit arrangements, border-clearance predictability, inland connections and shipping services.

For supply-chain planning, the next milestone is evidence of usable routes, reliable transit times and competitive end-to-end costs as the broader framework takes shape.

Source: EconomicTimes

Rohil

India’s food production has expanded, yet affordable nutrition remains out of reach for many households. KPMG’s Future of Food Systems: Preparing for the Next Frontier highlights the challenge of connecting food availability with access and affordability.

Part of that gap sits between farm and consumer. KPMG points to inadequate cold chains, storage and post-harvest infrastructure as sources of avoidable waste. Citing a 2022 government-commissioned study, its accompanying analysis puts post-harvest losses at 6–15% for fruits and 4.8–11.6% for vegetables, losses that constrain access and weaken farmer returns.

The bigger signal: distribution efficiency belongs in the nutrition conversation.

KPMG identifies stronger logistics, modern storage, traceability and better market information as priorities. It also recognises low incomes as a barrier: improving supply chains must work alongside measures that make healthy diets affordable.

Why it matters

For food brands and distribution leaders, the operating implication is to measure how much usable, nutritious food reaches the point of purchase. Tracking spoilage, remaining shelf life and availability can reveal where distribution improvements could preserve more of what India already produces.

Source: HinduBusinessLine

Rohil

Shipping routes are central to the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta on October 30–31. With S. Jaishankar attending, the US has identified energy security, supply chains and keeping critical sea lanes open as priorities. For India, the stakes include access to imported oil, LNG and fertilisers.

The agenda also covers critical minerals needed for energy security and advanced manufacturing. Discussions are expected to address how geopolitical tensions affect these essential flows.

The bigger signal: supplier diversification still leaves route dependency.

For businesses, the operating implication is that sourcing from multiple suppliers can leave a shared vulnerability when shipments depend on the same maritime chokepoint. A disruption can affect several inputs simultaneously, complicating production and delivery commitments.

Why it matters

Supply-chain teams should examine where critical materials travel alongside where they originate. Mapping shared shipping routes, assessing alternative gateways and reviewing inventory cover can help expose dependencies that a supplier list alone may miss.

The Atlanta meeting puts these risks on the diplomatic agenda. Any resulting commitments will need to be assessed as the talks conclude.

Source: DDIndia

Rohil

India has an opening as tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty push companies to diversify production. Capturing that demand will depend on the competitiveness of its manufacturing ecosystem.

Speaking at ISID, EAC-PM Chairman S Mahendra Dev highlighted electronics as evidence of India’s potential: exports have grown more than eightfold in a decade. He also identified barriers to broader industrial growth: power and logistics costs, input duties, compliance burdens and land availability.

The bigger signal: India needs more firms that can scale.

Dev flagged a shortage of mid-sized manufacturers between small enterprises and large businesses. That gap matters because global buyers need suppliers capable of delivering volume, competitive pricing and consistent quality. Market access alone cannot secure those orders.

Why it matters

For supply-chain leaders, the operating implication is clear: assess whether supplier capacity, production readiness and fulfilment can support larger commitments. Diversification creates the opening; dependable execution determines how much business a manufacturing network can sustain.

lSource: Business Standard

Rohil

The ET Supply Chain roundtable was unusually clear on sustainability: the industry’s problem is not lack of sustainability language. It is the failure to translate that language into operating decisions that make commercial sense. Vinayaka Gangavathi put it most directly: sustainability will scale when it makes both environmental and business sense. His argument was simple. Companies may like EVs, solar warehouses, and green sourcing in principle, but adoption will remain slow until they can answer practical questions around cost, infrastructure, returns, and day-to-day productivity.

That grounding matters because it moves the conversation out of boardroom aspiration and into execution reality. Vinayaka argued that the real shift happens when sustainability moves from annual reports into purchase orders, supplier scorecards, and daily decisions. He used bigbasket’s own experience with EV last-mile deployment to show why this matters. The business did not evaluate EV adoption through virtue-signaling; it evaluated it through operational questions: Where will charging infrastructure come from? What about battery replacement economics? Will delivery productivity fall? His point was not anti-sustainability. It was that sustainability adoption becomes real only when it survives business scrutiny.

Swaminathan Ramachandran reinforced the same idea from a strategic angle. He argued that sustainability should not be sold merely as something “good to do.” It should be framed as a business imperative with clear P&L impact, especially because it can deliver both cost advantage and greater resilience to shocks. That is a critical reframing. Once sustainability is tied to resilience, operating risk, and performance impact, it becomes easier to justify as a supply-chain investment rather than an image exercise.

Pankaj Aggarwal added a more execution-led version of the argument. He said the industry is “missing the boat” in logistics sustainability, especially because smaller EV trucks are now viable for last-mile and intra-city distribution, which already account for a large share of logistics activity. He also pointed to practical wins from rooftop solar in warehousing and EV forklifts inside warehouses, framing sustainability as a win-win on both sustainability and operating cost.

Taken together, the case-study lesson is quite sharp: sustainability will not scale in supply chains because leaders repeat the right words. It will scale when companies can prove that greener choices improve one or more of the following: cost, resilience, productivity, asset performance, supplier discipline, or long-term risk management. The roundtable makes clear that the missing bridge is not awareness. It is business-case discipline.

Why it matters:
Supply-chain sustainability becomes real only when it moves from ESG language to commercial logic, when the green decision is also an operating decision the business can defend.

Rohil

India is not facing a pure supply-chain talent shortage. The sharper issue, as the ET Supply Chain roundtable suggests, is whether the industry is building the kind of leadership pipeline the next decade will require. Pankaj Aggarwal took the contrarian view that India is already producing enough talent through engineering colleges, MBA programs, and other institutions, and that supply chain fundamentally needs people with logical thinking and problem-solving ability. But the wider discussion shows that talent volume is not the same as leadership readiness.

Vinayaka Gangavathi pushed the debate in a more practical direction. His point was that building future supply-chain leaders requires more than hiring smart people. Younger professionals increasingly want exposure to technology, analytics, AI, and real business problems. When companies hire strong talent but trap them in low-value reporting work, they waste the very capability they say they need. His line was memorable for a reason: hiring talented people and then making them spend half their day creating PowerPoint slides is “like hiring a Formula 1 driver and asking him to wash the car.” He also cited bigbasket’s internal mentoring effort, Project Drona, and its dedicated in-house L&D setup as examples of what leadership development can look like when it is treated intentionally.

Samrat Sehgal added a second layer to the argument. He pointed out that India has already created quick-commerce companies that are essentially technology-enabled supply chains, and that Indian supply-chain professionals are increasingly being exported into global roles by multinational firms. That is a sign of strength, not weakness. But he also made an important caveat: supply chain is still not always the first-choice career magnet for top talent, even though the function is gaining a stronger voice in the boardroom and evolving from an execution role into a strategic business enabler.

Sunit Mukherji sharpened the capability challenge further. He argued that what India now needs is a stronger blend of techno-commercial knowledge, data analytics, digital fluency, leadership traits, and commercial acumen. In other words, the next generation of supply-chain leaders cannot be built only around functional execution. They need to be able to navigate ambiguity, lead through disruption, and make business trade-offs in increasingly volatile operating conditions.

That is the real case-study takeaway from this discussion. India appears to have enough raw talent entering the system. The unresolved question is whether companies are giving that talent the right mix of exposure, mentorship, digital capability-building, and strategic ownership to become future leaders. The risk is not that India cannot produce supply-chain talent. The risk is that the industry may underdevelop the talent it already has.

Why it matters:
The next supply-chain advantage will not come from hiring more people alone. It will come from building leaders who can combine operations, analytics, technology, and business judgment at the same time.

Rohil

The strongest consensus in the ET Supply Chain roundtable came on AI: the industry is moving faster on adoption intent than on operating readiness. The core issue, according to multiple leaders, is not lack of ambition. It is the fact that companies are trying to scale AI on top of fragmented, inconsistent, low-trust data environments. Vinayaka Gangavathi stated it most bluntly: “Before AI, we need to fix our data.” He described a familiar reality where supply-chain data still sits across ERPs, Excel files, emails, WhatsApp groups, and warehouse systems. His summary was simple and memorable: data readiness must come before AI readiness.

That argument was echoed across the panel. Samrat Sehgal said AI can help process vast amounts of data, detect risk earlier, improve forecasting, optimize inventory, and generate decision options faster than planners in some cases, but it cannot fix poor data quality. Sunit Mukherji made a similar point from a value-chain angle: without proper data management and transparency across the chain, AI implementation becomes an onerous task. Swaminathan Ramachandran added that organizations need both a clear AI strategy and a realistic assessment of data preparedness before they can build meaningful use cases.

What makes this discussion especially valuable is that it goes beyond the standard “garbage in, garbage out” warning. It points to a broader readiness problem. Pankaj Aggarwal argued that many companies are still missing the fundamentals of a robust, cloud-based, multi-source supply chain. In that environment, AI becomes an expensive overlay on top of weak operating basics. Swaminathan extended the point further by saying leadership teams also need a better understanding of AI’s capabilities and limitations. Vinayaka captured that in one sharp line: AI success starts with leadership literacy, not technology deployment.

There is also a practical proof point in Vinayaka’s example from bigbasket. He described an earlier stage where purchase orders were created in Excel or Word, converted to PDFs, emailed, and stored in Google Drive. Only after the underlying data across channels was cleaned up through a custom ERP did implementing an AI-driven procurement ERP become much easier. That is the real case-study lesson here: companies do not fail with AI because AI is weak. They fail because the data model, process foundation, and leadership understanding are too weak to support it.

This makes the real supply-chain AI question much sharper. It is not “Who is experimenting with AI?” It is “Who has built the data discipline, process clarity, and leadership literacy needed for AI to deliver repeatable value at scale?” The roundtable suggests that this is where the true competitive gap will open.

Why it matters:
In supply chain, AI will not become a durable advantage until companies fix the layer underneath it: clean data, clear use-case strategy, resilient processes, and leaders who understand what the technology can actually do.

Rohil

India reaching 7.97% of GDP in logistics cost is a meaningful milestone. But the ET Supply Chain roundtable makes one thing clear: this is not the end-state. It is the start of a harder conversation about what supply-chain transformation should actually optimize for next. Vinayaka Gangavathi argued that India should celebrate the achievement, but “not get carried away,” because the next benchmark is not cost alone, it is speed, visibility, reliability, and customer experience. He grounded that in a practical quick-commerce reality: customers do not ask what logistics costs; they ask, “Where is my order?” and “Why is it late?”

That shift in framing matters. For years, Indian supply-chain discussions were dominated by the idea that lower logistics cost would automatically make the system more competitive. But the panel points to a more mature truth: low cost without high reliability is an incomplete win. Swaminathan Ramachandran said India should benchmark cost “along with speed and reliability,” and added that the country still has distance to travel in digitization and multimodal maturity. Sunit Mukherji reinforced that view by pointing to unfinished work in multimodal transport, waterways, last-mile delivery, hinterland access, and farm-to-fork efficiency.

There was also an important challenge to the benchmark itself. Pankaj Aggarwal questioned whether India is even comparing logistics costs correctly against the West, arguing that raw percentage comparisons ignore purchasing power parity, labor economics, fuel structures, and infrastructure differences. His point was not that India has arrived, but that global benchmarking needs to be interpreted more carefully. Vinayaka agreed with that caveat, but pushed the discussion toward what matters more operationally: logistics productivity, how efficiently the system moves goods, manages inventory, improves asset utilization, and delivers predictable service levels.

That is the real case-study lesson from this discussion. India may have improved the cost number, but the next stage of supply-chain advantage will be decided by whether the country can build a network that is not only cheaper, but faster, more digitized, more multimodal, and more dependable under stress. In other words, the country has improved the economics of movement; now it has to improve the quality of movement.

Why it matters:
The next supply-chain advantage for India will not come from lowering logistics cost alone. It will come from converting that progress into better service, better predictability, and better productivity across the network.

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