u/avi7611

This post is going to be a big comprehensive guide for new exporters to get into export import business.

Small disclaimer first: Being an agent i made a lot of mistakes, lost some money also learned the hard way. exporting is slow and boring and it's a full time job not a part time work. anyone promising you fast money is selling you something where you will regret later.

Phase 1: Basics and Documentation:

first things first IEC code from dgft, its online and maybe takes 2 days, cheap. without it you cant export legally simple as that. open a current account, get your GST sorted if not already. if youre doing food or agri look into APEDA and FSSAI, spice board tea board etc depending on what your selling.

and honestly, understand your own product properly first. whats the HS code, what quality do buyers abroad actually expect in grades certifications, dont waste money on fancy stuff right now. no big website no fancy office nothing. just the legal basics.

Phase 2: pick a product AND a country

Pick ONE product category where you have some actual edge. maybe your family has a unit, maybe you have solid supplier contacts somewhere, maybe you just know that product inside out. whatever it is, i learned it the hard way, you need to select a specific niche and not a wide range of products, like a specific grade of that product.

then pick which COUNTRY youre going after. honestly this research part is the real work. which countries import your product, how much, who are the actual buyers, at what price. this is the thing that separates people who close deals from people who just post looking for buyers in 20 groups and then wonder why nothing happens

Phase 3: Actually finding buyers (2nd most important part)

This is what like 90% of the DMs are about. ill be honest theres no magic button and to every DM i received the answer remains same but heres what actually works, roughly in the order how agents like me crack the deals.

> Trade data platforms. Now this is a controversial topic but imo the single most useful thing. Instead of cold emailing random companies from google maps these tools show you who is actually importing your product right now, which country, from who, you can decide the country trend, the product trend the buyers who are specifically buying your niche.

Theres a bunch of them And I am not going to say that one is better than other, You take the demo, look for your product if you are able to see shipments then buy it, now some people will come commenting that india data is not showing now these platforms are useless, but the main thing is you don't need the latest shipment data man ! Trade data platforms have 10-15 years of already existing data and not just from india they have it from all over the world!! you get buyer names, prices, linkedin, contacts, emails etc. You can still find thousands of buyers of your product.

To me trade data platforms are bread and butter i have used almost all the of them panjiva, volza, eximpedia, globalwits and currently using panjiva for company reports and shipscout.ai as a side tool in a sharing subscription with someone on this subreddit. Some are expensive some are good for value but more or less you take the demo, search for your product, if you see less than 100 shipments for your products from india then pass and you can negotiate hard with these companies and even split the subscription, but only buy where you can see data and not where you can't see any data, recently volza and $biz and eximpedia have become useless and have almost 0 data from india so give a pass on them and lot of people on this group split the subscription so you can try that also.

> b2b marketplaces: alibaba, tradeindia, exportersindia, go4worldbusiness. mixed bag honestly, lot of time pass enquiries and some fake ones too but you do get real buyers also, instead of these platforms you can actually find better deals on facbook groups sometime so treat it like a cherry on top.

> Trade fairs: If you can afford it going to an actual exhibition across the globe in your buyers country is worth 100 cold emails. face to face interaction build lot of trust even just visiting without a stall helps but i would suggest instead of spending lakhs in trade fairs your first preferences should be trade data platforms.

>Linkedin: actually works if you dont spam DMs and posts. Find the sourcing/procurement people at companies that import your stuff, connect properly, build some connection and start posting geniune helpful content about your product which helps buyers, i find all linkedin people from trade data paltforms only so this part is done there.

Phase 4: Closing without getting scammed

Finding the buyer is only half of the part. closing safe deals is other half.

> Once you have the Buyers list from your research on google, trade data platforms, linkedin etc then you start crafting very high Personalized email for your buyers and do not just try to sell anything in your first email, try to enquire about them like you are a buyer, once they reply and the ice is broken now Include your information from your research, like what products they are importing. How much price they are importing, what are their trade partners, And why they should source from you. Can you give them better price? Can you give them higher quality? Can you give them faster shipments? For each and every buyer, you have to research these information and include them in the mail otherwise, no one is going to reply to your email and they will straight go into spam.
Send 20-50 emails daily to high value mid segment buyers and if someone don't reply then take followups and track the status of each and every conversation. You can use apollo.io, hubspot, zoho CRM or some trade data platforms have inbuilt CRM like vujis and shipscout to keep this all in track.

> Payment terms, be very very careful. Advance will look safest for you but buyers might resist and specially in GCC countries even all the genuine buyers buys in credit so you need a way to confirm that this buyer is genuine and you can do that by looking that buyer's history on trade data platforms, see how many long term partners they have, did they default any payments in past or if you can find any vouch for them on facebook groups etc.

> Do not target big corporate buyers they will ignore your emails And think about it, if you you are afraid of supplying to anyone who is very new in the market, then big buyers are also afraid about small exporters who are new in the market, it goes both ways so start with start small with new or mid buyers. do a small trial order, see if they actually pay, see if they are serious, build trust then scale further

Thats the rough roadmap that i follow some mistakes i made, there might be other people/agents who are closing deals in other ways and honestly each phase could be its own post.

I hope this help some new exporters in this community as i see atleast 10 posts from people who are trying to get into exports. i would also like other agents in this community to provide some insights so that i can also learn new things.

I am a agent who works with exporters to find buyers and for me Trade data platforms are my daily bread and butter, and i am going to tell you how to find buyers for your exports and this post is not some AI generated post, i will write my own techniques what i have learned with my experince.Due to the recent India trade data ban It has become a bit difficult to reach out to exporters, but still the process remains same.

I've owned subscription of five different platforms And I'm going to review all of them in the end, Since too many people are coming in my DM to ask me how I find buyers And I hope that this thread will help all the new exporters who are trying to enter into the market but they don't want to spend their hard earned money on these trade data platforms without knowing how to use them.
And specifically, I'm going to rate my experience with one of the worst trade data platforms That literally scammed me.

How to find buyers for your exports: heads up - there is no magic, only hardwork.

1. Identify your product:
If you are very new into the export market and you don't even have a product decided, then first thing is you need to see the market trend and decide what product do you want to export. Trade data platforms can help you here to identify what types of products are trending, what types of products are not trending. They analyze the shipment volume and they can also actually help you to target the actual keyword. For example, organic honey might be more trending than normal honey. So you need to see what is trending.

2. Target country:
Once you have your products decided, The next step is to identify the geographic locations where you want to export. And many people makes this process a very complex process. For example, they directly target markets like USA, UAE, Europe and they ignore the low hanging fruits like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh Where you save a lot of shipping cost because you are shipping through road. And again, Trade Intelligence platform helps you a lot in this part to check how much demand is there for your product in that country.

3. Finding buyers :
next steps here is to do buyer analysis for genuine buyers. The reason why this step is crucial is because trust me, you don't want to be stranded with a pending payment after sending your shipment to a unknown buyer in UAE, And get scammed. Now this is the main reason you would want to use trade data platforms as you can see who is importing your product in your target country and can check the buyer's import history.

4. Finding contact information:
Now once you have the list of buyers for your product, You will have to find the contacts for your buyers. Now, this is the tricky part as you don't want to grab the contact for their customer service desk. You want the contact for their import-export manager or supply chain manager, or if it's a small company, then the number of their owner. Trade intelligence platforms provide these numbers but don't rely on them because half of the time they will not be able to provide you any number or the number they provide will be generic.

For this part, you can use online lead databases like Apollo, Zoominfo or hunter.io , or If you don't want to purchase their subscription, then you can directly reachout whatever contact you have for that company and then try to contact the owner but that is a lot of work and hassle.

5. Buyer Reachout:
Once you are done with a excel list of buyers and their email and phone number, the next step is to reach out to all these buyers with a customised email, linkedin, whatsapp reachouts. And do not same exact same messages to all the buyers. Every message should be customized according to that buyer and trade platforms will help you to find out information regarding that buyer so you can customize your messages according to it.

6: Tracking reachouts and reply:
Finding a buyer for export is not much different than running a sales team. You have to basically build a sales pipeline where you can predict how many reachouts take to close one buyer. For me personally i am able to close 1-2 buyer per 80-100 quality reach outs, this number can vary significantly for different industries but the process remains same, some niche industries like chemical, pharma and machinery might have have high close rates then common industries like food and agro.
This is the part where most exporters get lazy and slack off because Tracking reach outs, tracking replies, managing all the emails manually requires a lot of work, and I would suggest you to use a free CRM like Zoho.

Trade data platforms:

1. Volza: The big classic giant and the oldest company in India that sells Trade data. I have a very long history with volza. Volza was my daily go-to platform, but since after the India trade data ban it is now useless. There is no point in spending money to buy volza subscription now unless you take their SME plan which is like 4.5L, But only a few handful of companies have Malaysia data, including volza, and if you want specifically Malaysia data, then go for Volza.
2. Panjiva: I have taken their subscription earlier in the past, and also I am currently using Panjiva as a shared subscription. This is the most renowned company for trade intelligence data. They have the most detailed data, The best part about them is deep company intelligence reports where they just not only look at trade data but they will also look at companies financials, risks and internal details, everything in most detailed manner. But the subscription costs are so high that a small exporter can't afford to take their subscription. But honestly, there is no better platform than Pangeva right now in the market. If you have money to buy their subscription, then go for it, it's a no-brainer, Also, they have recently introduced the AI shipment sorting. Basically, you can use layman sentences to tell how you want to sort the shipments or what exact shipments you want to see and their AI will give you the exact results which you want. Basically, I use panjiva to confirm the authenticity of trade data on any other platform.
3. The dollar business: Do not even try to buy their subscription they will offer you some exceptional discounts. After the India data ban, I took demo from Dollar Business because they were giving some exceptional amount of discount but their software is very old and there is no data no extra features. They will try to give you full year subscription in like 40K but spending any amount of money on non existent data is same as wasting money.
4. Shipscout: I came across this company while comparing alternatives after the data ban and this is a very new company so i was very skeptical about them since there is no review on internet for them but after taking demo of 5-6 platforms after the India trade data ban, I finally took subscription of shipscout and by far, they have the most detailed buyer data at least for Indian exporters (still mirror data only) for my industry (food and agro, gems and jewellery, machinery, chemical, handicrafts, pharma and machinery). But data was not the reason I took their subscription, I took their subscription because i was saving money on extra softwares like hubspot and apollo because they give buyer contact information in CRM inbuilt where you can send mail to buyer directly from software, so basically everything from finding buyers, finding contact and reachout can be done in one place only and I am genuinely able to do much higher number of reach out than manually sending mails. But still take it with a grain of salt, they also have some problem which I have realised after using 6 months. I know they are a new company but they keep changing UI and addin features on their software, so there are a lot of glitches, sometimes the intelligence report take 2-3 days but overall managable. plus if you report any glitch, they will solve it in a day or 2 and sometime give you bonus credits in reporting bugs lol.
5. One company which scammed me (I will not take their name publicly, but if I don't get refund then I will highlight them later.), One day after India trade data ban, I took their demo and all the old India data was visible and I immediately took their subscription Because they were promising that They will still provide Indian customs data. I paid them 90k for one year. And after two days, all the India data was gone which they promised me and I am still asking them for refund, but there is no one who is responding to me. I have sent them multiple emails and now i have no option but to file a complaint against them, and this is a very big indian company as well.

Now the real question do you need to pay lakhs on trade data platform ?:

NO: If you are still in the very early stages, if you haven't figured out your manufacturing, supply, documentation Then taking trade data platform doesn't make much sense. First sort out all these things above.

YES: If you are serious about exporting and not just thinking to export, You have your documentation done or in progress and you have manufacturing or supply ready. Then there are majorly two ways on how you can find buyers. One is to hire an agent like me, whom you can pay who will eventually use the these data platform to find you buyers, or you can you learn to use the trade data platform, CRM and lead databases and find buyers on your own, Either ways, you are going to spend money.

I can easily sell my services here and tell you to hire me, but honestly, I am currently overloaded with client and I don't have any bandwidth, but I still want to help people in this community so i wrote this post that i hope will help many people and new exporters.