The quote is not the risk
Price is the one thing you can check from anywhere. What you cannot check from eight thousand kilometres away is whether the supplier owns a factory or a letterhead, whether the sample and the shipment will match, and whether the delivery date survives contact with a busy season. Those are the three things that cost real money, and all of them need somebody standing in the building.
Who this is for
You know what you want made. You do not know who to trust.
- Directory shortlists that all turn out to be traders
- Samples that arrive perfect and shipments that do not
- Quotes you cannot compare because nothing is like for like
- No way to verify anything without getting on a plane
It works, but it costs you time and surprises.
- Lead times that move after the order is placed
- Quality that drifts between production runs
- A landed cost you only discover after clearing
- Nobody on the ground when something goes wrong
What we run
How it starts
Not with a retainer. With a Scan — two weeks, ₹75,000 — across every area where money leaks, not just this channel. You get a ranked list of what it is costing you and what each fix is worth. If it will not pay for itself, you hear that inside the first two weeks.
Then you either act on the list yourself, or we run the parts you want run. No lock-in either way. See exactly what you get and what it costs →
Related: Sourcing agent in India · Selling into India · Fulfilment in India
Common questions
How do I find a manufacturer in India?
Start with the category rather than the factory. India is regional: knitwear concentrates around Tiruppur, leather around Chennai and Kanpur, cosmetics around Gujarat and Himachal, engineering around Pune and Coimbatore. Once the region is right, the shortlist is short. The mistake is starting from a directory listing and negotiating with whoever answers, because the exporters easiest to find online are usually trading houses rather than the factory floor.
How do I know a supplier is a real factory and not a middleman?
Somebody has to stand in it. Registration documents, export histories and photographs are all easy to produce and prove very little. A visit establishes whether the machines, the workers and the capacity match what has been claimed, and whether the samples were made where they say. This is the single most common failure in sourcing from India and it is entirely preventable.
What does it cost to source from India?
It is quoted to the brief, because the work behind a single-product repeat order and a multi-supplier programme are not comparable. Tell us the category, the volumes and the timeline and you get a real number rather than a percentage band. What we can say now is that it is structured so we are not paid more when your order costs more.
What are the minimum order quantities?
Category dependent, and more negotiable than most first-time buyers assume. Apparel often starts at a few hundred pieces per colourway, cosmetics at a few thousand units because of filling lines, engineered parts by tooling rather than volume. A factory that will not move on quantity will often move on colours or delivery instead.
Who checks quality before it ships?
An inspection happens at the factory before the goods leave, against a specification agreed in writing beforehand. Finding a defect at the port is expensive and finding it in your warehouse is worse, because by then the freight, the duty and the clearing have all been paid on goods you cannot sell.
Can you handle export documentation and shipping?
Yes. Export paperwork, freight coordination and the landed cost calculation are part of the work, run by licensed specialists we have used for years and hold to the date. You deal with one partner instead of five vendors, and nothing stalls on a missing paper.
In more detail
Manufacturing in India, in practical terms
Manufacturing in India works well when the category matches the country and badly when it does not. India is strong in textiles and apparel, leather, jewellery, cosmetics and personal care, food, pharmaceuticals, auto components and light engineering — sectors with deep supplier bases, established export routes and a workforce that has been making these things for decades. It is a harder place to build consumer electronics or anything needing a semiconductor supply chain. Knowing which side of that line your product falls on is the first honest conversation to have, and it saves a great deal of money.
Why sourcing from India goes wrong
Almost never on price. It goes wrong on the gap between the sample and the shipment, on a lead time that quietly moves, on a specification that was agreed verbally and understood differently, and on a middleman who is optimising a margin you cannot see. Distance is what makes all of these expensive: by the time the goods arrive, the money has gone and the leverage has gone with it. The fix is unglamorous — a written specification, a verified factory, an inspection before shipping, and somebody in the same time zone whose job it is to chase.
What an India sourcing partner should actually do
Shortlist suppliers who genuinely make what you need, stand in the factory, negotiate on your side of the table, hold production to the dates, inspect before it ships, and hand you a landed cost that includes duty, freight and clearing rather than an ex-works price that flatters everybody. It should also tell you when India is the wrong answer for your product, which for some categories it plainly is. That conversation costs nothing and is worth more than a shortlist you cannot use.
Find out where the money is going first.
Before you spend more on this channel, spend two weeks finding out which parts of it work.