Alibaba.com events connects Indian suppliers with European brands

Alibaba.com Limited hosted an offline sourcing event in New Delhi this week to provide small Indian suppliers with an opportunity to connect with EUROGROUP, one of the largest buying offices in Asia for four leading retailers from Europe including Rewe Group (a leading retailer in the German-speaking regions of Europe), bauMax (a leading retailer in Eastern Europe), Coop (the second largest retailer in Switzerland) and Rautakesko (the largest building and home improvement products supplier in the Nordic and Baltic countries). The event was attended by about 60 Alibaba.com Gold Supplier customers in India from across sectors such as household products, garden tools, granite tiles, electronics items, and food and personal care products.

Held from 28-29 June, the two-day sourcing event aimed to promote made-in-India products to the European market by connecting high-quality Indian suppliers directly to EUROGROUP, which represents some of the largest European retailers which together have a customer reach of 38 million people spanning Central Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Through the supplier orientation session and networking session organised by Alibaba.com on day one, the attending suppliers were given an opportunity to gain first-hand information about the buyer, the global sourcing trend and various export markets. Thirty attendants from 20 companies were also pre-selected to present their products to the buyer at the one-on-one meetings on day two of the event.

"This is the first time that Alibaba.com has held an offline sourcing event in India after we recognised the need of Indian suppliers to interact with prospective customers globally," said Vincent Wong, Senior Director of Buyer Service and Development, Alibaba.com.

The event was an initiative of Alibaba.com's Buyer Service and Development team, which caters specifically to big corporations with large-scale procurement needs such as P&G, Wal-Mart and Woolworths Australia. The team provides those big buyers with a myriad of services and user-friendly tools ranging from online supplier matching to online promotion, sourcing training and customized private sourcing events.