I have been a regular visitor to India Internation Trade Fair for last multiple years. It happens usually during the pleasant weather of November at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.
Types of Visitors: From a casual scan, it would seem like there are two types of visitors to these fairs.
- The Family Man: This constitutes the major portion of the Crowd. These are the regular 9-5 working class, who find option of an outing with family during this event. Kids are happy because they get the purchase new toys. Ladies find new designs for cloths or house hold items. Male of the family happily finds few electronic items which are new in market or some tools which he thinks would help in fixing small things at home. (Though every time he is calling electrician or plumber even for small tasks.)
- The Business Man: This is a very small subset of crowd on these IITFs, but yes, they do exist. This group can be further sub-divided in two groups. Few of the person in this group are serious person who are already working on business and is looking to expand the business. Every counter they visit they scan for any new product they can include in the list of items they are serving to their customers.
Second sub-group is that of probable business man, these are the people who are currently working in 9-5 setup but are willing to move over to other side of spectrum and are looking for ideas and inspirations.
How 2025 IITF is Different:
Till almost last year, 90% of the products apart from the Cloths and Food were of China origin. This year it was a happy surprise to see this number dropping below 20 to 30% from what met eyes.
This year, IITF was majorly included Indian producers. And what I really liked when discussing with the people of stalls was, that most of them were business owners or their direct employees. It was evident in the how enthusiastically they were detailing their showcase. They had deep insight about their product and they were happy to share with who so ever was willing to discuss.
Saral Ajivika Mission and NABARD products were also highlights. This showcased, India’s potential of producing at rural level and how and why India was so prosperous before being colonialised first by Muslims then by Britishers. All these rulers impacted the fabric of rural industries.
Impact: With government support multitude of self-motivated individuals who are now into small scale manufacturing. It seems like we have a surplus of products.
One of the primary impacts of this would be competitive cost reduction, thus reduction of margins for the producers. It would further impact the earnings of the artists involved in these small businesses.
Next step: We need to modernize the products to fulfil aspirations of GEN Z, the new big consumer. It was good to see, multiple vendors from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand coming up with modern designs in their metal craft.
I suppose help from the brands to support them with designs, Purchase their produce to be presented to global brands would certainly go a big way in reaching the goal of VIKSIT BHARAT.