25,000 SMEs to expand, grow in Thailand; new cross border arragement to help India’s small businesses

Technology for MSMEs: A new corridor between India and Thailand will be created to connect SMEs, to enable them to strike new trade deals and is estimated to bring more than 40,000 SMEs from Thailand and India onto the GlobalLinker platform.

Technology for MSMEs: Thailand India Business Council has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with networking platform for SMEs GlobalLinker to establish a customized platform — Thailand India GlobalLinker to facilitate networking between Indian and Thai SMEs digitally along with enabling them to connect with other GlobalLinker members in Asia for new trade deals. “The MoU will help in getting Indian SMEs to network with the SMEs and industry bodies of Thailand and create more opportunities for themselves in Thailand. It will help SMEs to create a corridor to get new trade in sectors such as rubberwood, rubber tyres, tapioca, construction and cosmetics,” Sameer Vakil, Co-founder and CEO, GlobalLinker told Financial Express Online.

A new corridor between India and Thailand will be created to connect SMEs, to enable them to strike new trade deals and is estimated to bring more than 40,000 SMEs from Thailand and India onto the GlobalLinker platform. “Recent data show that trade between the two nations has grown at least 60 per cent since 2016. Thailand is an investment-friendly destination and encourages opportunities from SMEs across sectors,” said Vakil adding that Around 25,000 SMEs are going to be benefitted from the partnership.

The two-way trade between India and Thailand stood at $12.46 billion in 2018 with around $7.60 billion in Thai exports to India and $4.86 billion in Indian exports to Thailand, according to the data available on the website of the Embassy of India in Thailand. Also, the country is India’s 5th largest trading partner after Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia in the ASEAN region. GlobalLinker currently has more than 2.6 lakh SMEs on the platform as it digitizes SMEs and connects them to other SMEs through the creation of digital business cards, digital business Profiles, and digital product catalogues.

India has around 63 million MSMEs that contribute 45 per cent share to the manufacturing sector and close to 31 per cent to the services sector and employs more than 110 million Indians, as per the government data.