Finding Suppliers in India by Type, Channel and Trade Fair

Why won't Indian factories answer your emails? A Dubai trading company asked a version of that in 2026, after its search came up empty. Makers, it said, "either don't respond, are difficult to reach, or aren't willing to work with overseas trading companies" (r/SmallBusinessUAE, 2026 (opens in a new tab)). We hear the same from buyers in Sydney, Auckland and Leeds, and in most cases the makers were happy to take foreign orders but the buyer was looking in the wrong places.

This page is about the right places. We'll cover the kinds of supplier you'll meet, the channels that reach real makers (export council lists, government portals and fairs), and what the marketplaces really check and protect, read from their own terms.

One honest caveat - nobody publishes what share of India's online "manufacturers" really run machines, so we won't pretend to have a number. What we can give you is a way to find out for your own shortlist.

The decision in brief is in the playbook: Who you can buy from.

Know Which Kind of Supplier You're Talking To

Every supplier you meet is one of five types, and none of them is a type to avoid. Intermediaries and contract makers are how trade works everywhere, and the big retailers on your high street buy through them every day of the week. Your job is simply to know who makes your goods and who answers for quality.

The merchant exporter is the one most first-time buyers meet. For small or mixed orders, where no single maker could fill the container, it's often the right partner, in our opinion the best one. Under GST a merchant export is zero-rated just like a maker's export (TaxGuru commentary, 2025 (opens in a new tab)), so there's no tax reason to avoid one either.

Now, the EOU row. A 100% Export Oriented Unit must export its entire production, the scheme says plainly that "trading units are not covered", and the unit needs at least ₹1 crore in plant and machinery outside a few exempt sectors like handicrafts and agriculture (DGFT, FTP 2023 chapter 6 (opens in a new tab), paras 6.00, 6.04 and 6.06). In plain terms an EOU is a maker with a legal promise to export.

That's a useful signal about how the business is set up, but it is not a quality certificate.

The One Question for Every Intermediary

"Which factory makes my goods?"

Traders often keep the maker private, and they're quite open about how they do it. One piece of advice to an Indian food exporter in 2025 was to "share copies of certificates (like FSSAI, IEC, ISO, FDA, etc.) but blur or cover details of manufacturer", and to get buyers to sign a non-circumvention agreement (r/IndiaBusiness, 2025 (opens in a new tab)).

That's a normal way to protect a business built on relationships, and another trader in the same thread pointed out that most importers never try to cut the trader out anyway. You can respect it and still ask which unit answers for quality. A trader's certificates cover the trader, not the factory, so you need to know whose certificates sit behind your order. The checks are on verify suppliers.

Start With the Export Councils

What's an export promotion council? It's a body set up under India's trade ministry for one product group. AEPC covers apparel, EPCH handicrafts, CEPC carpets, CLE leather, GJEPC gems and jewellery, and there are plenty more. Exporters join to get the membership certificate (the RCMC) they need for most export incentives, and that is why the councils hold India's best supplier lists.

Most of those lists sit behind a member login, with one happy exception. AEPC's member directory is public, and when we read it on 24 September 2026 it held 6,728 members, each with a city and PIN code (AEPC member directory (opens in a new tab), our count). 2,094 of them, about 31%, are in Tiruppur, and 1,018 of those list cotton T-shirts.

After Tiruppur come New Delhi (778), Mumbai (572), Jaipur (415), Noida (344), Gurugram (259) and Ludhiana (218). If you buy knitwear then start with that list, because it beats any directory search we've run.

Treat the product codes as a hint though. Members declare them themselves and the data is noisy (one T-shirt maker in our count had listed a footwear code). The other councils were harder going when we checked in September 2026 - GJEPC and TEXPROCIL need a member login, EPCH's directory link redirected to a membership page, CEPC's site was down, and CLE says it separates makers from merchants but offers no public search. For food and farm goods, APEDA runs an exporter directory (opens in a new tab) with a maker-or-merchant filter, which is self-declared and rather generous, since many records claim every product the authority covers.

A council list gives you a legal name, a city and a council, and that's where the work starts. Run the name through the free registries before you send a single enquiry.

Use the Government Portals for What They're Good At

Three official portals reach exporters directly. Each one does a single job well, and it pays to know which job.

DGFT Trade Connect, "Source from India" (DGFT (opens in a new tab), read 24 September 2026). It's open and needs no login, but it's small, with 1,347 exporter profiles when we counted, because exporters have to opt in. Each profile shows the IEC, the countries exported to, key products and an export turnover band ("100 to 390 USD Thousand", for example).

That band comes from DGFT's own records, not from the supplier, which makes it the one free and independent check on claimed scale. It's the tool we'd open first when someone tells you they ship "containers every week". A Buyer Connect feature also lets you post an enquiry that only exporters with a valid IEC can see, and that's a neat answer to the Dubai buyer's problem.

India-USA Trade Facilitation Portal (indiausatrade.mea.gov.in (opens in a new tab), read 23 September 2026). It's free, but you need a US EIN to register, so it serves American buyers only. Its "verified" tag means the IEC, GST, incorporation and PAN documents passed an OCR check, which is a document check and nothing more. The Government of India disclaims any endorsement of listed firms, and payment happens outside the portal.

FIEO's Indian Trade Portal (indiantradeportal.in (opens in a new tab)). Trade queries are for FIEO or council members only, and we found nothing on it built for a foreign buyer.

Go to a Fair

A council fair puts hundreds of exporters in one hall, and every one of them is already a council member. For most first trips it's the best use of a week, hands down. You see the product, handle samples and read people across a table, and no directory under the sun gives you that.

Know who you'll meet though. At IHGF, the handicrafts fair, an exhibitor needs EPCH membership plus three years of export performance (IHGF FAQ (opens in a new tab), read 23 September 2026). IIJS, the jewellery show, is "exclusively for GJEPC members". Neither rule separates makers from merchant exporters, so you still ask the maker question at the stand. Dates, hosted-buyer places and which fair suits which buyer are on India's trade fairs, and we keep the calendar there and nowhere else.

UK buyers get a shortcut. Some Indian makers exhibit at UK trade shows, which is why the UK importer we quoted earlier pointed buyers to fairs at home (r/smallbusinessuk, 2026 (opens in a new tab)). You can meet a factory without getting on a plane.

Read the Marketplace Terms as a Foreign Buyer

Marketplaces are where most foreign buyers start, and where most of the confusion lives. The terms are written with a domestic buyer in mind, so read them as the foreign buyer you are.

What the Badges Check

IndiaMART's TrustSEAL is a paid seller package (sellers on forums, 2025 to 2026, so check the current price with IndiaMART). IndiaMART then checks registration, GST, PAN, bank and contact details, and its own page says the check covers business authenticity, "not product quality" (IndiaMART (opens in a new tab), read September 2026). Alibaba's Verified Supplier is also a paid tier, with a third-party inspector visiting the premises first (Alibaba (opens in a new tab), read September 2026). Both badges tell you one useful thing - the business is real. Neither says a word about your order. We looked for what TradeIndia's and ExportersIndia's badges check and found nothing published, so we'd treat those as an open listing.

IndiaMART's Payment Protection, Read in Full

The Buyer Payment Protection Plan, in force from 12 February 2026, covers TrustSEAL sellers only, on the first deal between that buyer and seller only, for complete non-delivery only, claimed within 60 days, up to ₹5 lakh (IndiaMART terms (opens in a new tab)). Quality, partial delivery, delays and custom orders are all out. The plan covers KYC-verified business buyers in India, and "foreign buyer transactions" are excluded in so many words. IndiaMART also says the plan is "not an insurance contract, escrow mechanism, financial guarantee", and the older "Pay with IndiaMART" service is discontinued (IndiaMART help (opens in a new tab)).

So a buyer in Sydney or Leeds who pays an IndiaMART seller has the same platform protection as one who found the seller in a newspaper, which is to say none at all.

We still wouldn't avoid IndiaMART. Buyers who do well there treat it "like a directory of sellers", in one US voice's words (r/Entrepreneur, 2023 (opens in a new tab)), take the contact off-platform and run their own checks.

How the Lead Model Works

The platform's real product is leads. Post a requirement and it goes to many sellers at once, with paid tiers seeing it first (r/IndianEntrepreneur, Indian seller, 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Then the phone starts ringing, and one buyer found that even a plain search, with a phone number entered, gets passed on as a lead (r/IndiaBusiness, 2025 (opens in a new tab)). Some listings are built from bought data rather than by the business itself, according to a platform employee (r/IndiaBusiness, 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

What do you do about it? Use a separate phone number and email for enquiries from day one, and treat anyone who contacts you first as unvetted rather than as a crook. Most are ordinary traders working their leads. The same goes for the "manufacturers" who message you after you show up in import shipment data - they pulled your name from a list, and that's sales, not vetting (r/exportersindia, 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

Alibaba and India-Based Sellers

Alibaba's Trade Assurance holds your payment until the order ships as agreed. Since 30 June 2025 it's available for Indian sellers who opt in, on payments made on Alibaba only (Alibaba.com, 30 June 2025 (opens in a new tab), Supplier-stated). Before that, Indian sellers asked for PayPal or a wire instead (buyers on forums, 2020 to 2023), and some still do. If the listing doesn't show Trade Assurance, or you pay off the platform, then you're not covered.

A Common Myth About Indian Marketplaces

"IndiaMART is mostly scammers." Much of that reputation comes from people buying grey-market medicines, who fill the complaint threads (r/IndiaBusiness, 2025 (opens in a new tab)). For a business buyer the real gap is much more boring than scams, because nobody verifies the seller for you. SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) fills that gap if you'd rather not do it yourself.

Agents, Artisans and Offices

Buying houses and agents find makers, run sampling, follow production and organise QC, for a commission or a margin. How they charge and how to check one is on ways to source from India. A warning about finding one online - public "recommend me an agent" threads draw mostly self-promotion, and in one UK thread two accounts posted the same comment word for word (forums, 2025 to 2026). Subtle, right? Treat any agent's list of big-brand clients as their own claim until they give you a reference you can call.

Artisans reach you through cooperatives, NGOs and the exporters who work with them. The artisan holds the skill and the exporting entity holds the IEC. The government's PEHCHAN card, linked to Aadhaar, had gone to 31.14 lakh artisans by June 2023 (PIB, June 2023 (opens in a new tab)). It confirms that a named person practises a named craft, and says nothing about volume, lead time or export experience. Check the exporting entity the same way you'd check anyone. For markets and wholesale buying, see India's wholesale markets.

Your own office is rarely worth it. A liaison office can promote trade but can't earn income in India or act as a buying agent, and the Reserve Bank wants three profitable years and US$50,000 net worth behind it (RBI Master Direction (opens in a new tab), updated 18 May 2021). The full rules are on ways to source from India. SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) can be your team on the ground instead.

What We Don't Know Yet

Back to Dubai

The Dubai trading company described what it found accurately enough, it just fished in the wrong pond. Cold enquiries to makers who fill their books at fairs will mostly go unanswered, and the sellers who do answer are mostly traders.

Run the same search from the top of the ladder and the conversation changes. That means the council list for your product, Trade Connect's Buyer Connect so only IEC holders see your enquiry, one fair, and the question "which factory makes my goods?" at every single stand.

Each supplier type above also has its own page under Sourcing, if you want the longer version.

Next step → How to verify Indian suppliers