FTS-DOC ITA

Moderator: Linda Abbruzzese

June 3, 2008

8:30 am CT

Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. During the question answer session please press star 1 to ask a question.

Today’s conference is being recorded, if you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Miss Linda Abbruzzese, ma’am you may begin.

Linda Abbruzzese: Thank you. Good morning for those of you joining on the east and the west coast and good evening for those from India, thank you for joining us for a webinar on India’s retail industry.

I’m pleased to note that we have more than 25 people registered for this webinar today. I am Linda Abbruzzese, International Trade Specialist for the Marketing Communications Office for the US Commercial Service of the Department of Commerce.

This webinar is being brought to you in cooperation by the US and Foreign Commercial Service and I would like to welcome all participants in the export community for joining us from all across the USA and India to learn about the India’s retail market.

In a moment I’ll turn the presentation over to Carmen D’Aloisio, Senior Commercial Officer for New Delhi India who will be the main speaker for today’s webinar.

Also (Ali Askar Matawalla), Commercial Specialist from Mumbai India, (Manju Sheri Fukan), Commercial Specialist from Bangalore India, (Sevru Grover), Commercial Assistant for New Delhi India and Smita Joshi, Commercial Systems for New Delhi India will be available at the end of the presentation to help answer questions.

Contact information will also be provided to everyone at the end of the presentation. I’d also like to also introduce (Eileen Mande) who will also be a speaker for today’s webinar.

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Now because of the large number of participants on line, now we have more than, it looks like 21, I just wanted to say that due to the amount of people that are online we are not able to take voice questions.

However we do invite you to type in questions on your screen as they occur to you during the presentation. There is a box at the bottom of the screen on which you can click and type in your question at any time during the presentation.

We will compile the questions and present as many as time allows after the presentation. Type of questions which are not answered during the webinar due to time constraints will receive personal answers via email after the webinar.

In addition, all listeners will be provided with information for any individual follow up counseling, expert assistance or market research. Now for those of you who just joined us and logged in, you can still join our internet conference.

Now I would like to introduce live on line, Carmen D’Aloisio, Senior Commercial Office for New Delhi India, Carmen, thank you for joining us.

Carmen D’Aloisio: Thank you Linda and good morning to everyone on this call, it’s really fantastic to be able to talk to you this morning and hold this seminar focused on the retail sector.

We look forward to beginning a dialogue with the companies who are with us today and hopefully taking some of you all the way through to our great mission that we have planned for the fall.

We certainly US success here in India is the way we judge our own success, so we’re really excited about having you all.

So let me jump in and start our briefing. We’re going to cover basically three parts; this briefing is in three parts. I’m going to do a broad overview, and then my colleague (Eileen Mande) will talk specifically about the retail market.

And then we’d like to wrap up before we take questions and answers with a little discussion about the partnership mission that we’ve organized next November with FedEx.

And a little bit about how we can continue to support your efforts during that mission but certainly afterwards. So let me turn to the first slide, and I’d like to really present the - to you all those of you who - some of you may be familiar with the market, but certainly this is a great place to start.

Talking about the market, the phenomenal metrics and demographics we have here as well as India’s great momentum and great relationship that exists between India and the United States, a growing partnership politically but one that - where trade and people to people exchanges have been really leading the way for years.

But nobody doubts today that India, increasingly powerful India, a democratic, a rising India, is probably one of America’s most important economic opportunities to come in a long time.

And the US Government certainly over the last couple of years, India and the US and Indian government have been working very closely to strengthen this partnership. It’s a priority for both countries.

And I think it’s going to be one of President Bush’s most important accomplishments. US business also multinationals of also smaller companies had made the strategic decision that India is a place they need to be.

It’s an important market, not as an outsourcing destination, but as a major growth market on par with China. And just in a retail trade, retail business, some major American companies have already decided to come into the market at this point in time, even though the policy environment for retail is not totally open.

But the opportunity is so great that they decided not to wait. One of course is Wal-Mart which has tied up with the Bharti group and the other one is Office Depot which has paired up with the other big retailer making waves here in India, Reliance.

Both of them will be at the wholesale end of the partnerships where foreign companies that are multi-brand companies can participate without any problems.

But let me also say that what’s important to note is that in - and India certainly has phenomenal sustained growth and now is the time to get in on that growth cycle and to take advantage of the first mover advantage if you will, to get a jump on the competition.

So we certainly are encouraging American companies to dive in right now. I’d like to briefly talk about the shorten meeting turned prospects, economic prospects. And for 2008 and beyond, they will be strong and they’re continuing to be strong.

India has had an unprecedented three years of 9% growth, almost four years at 9%. But for the last three years including the fiscal year that just ended April 1, India has had nine plus percent growth, second fastest growing economy in the world after China.

Now there is a global slow down and - affecting India to some extent, so there are higher interest rates there. Export demand for Indian products, especially in the textile areas and traditional part of the economy has slowed.

Big market with the US and there are fewer financing options for our Indian firms, so this global slowdown is having an impact. But India is well positioned to ride out this slowdown.

And the impact is limited, let me tell you why. Two thirds of the Indian economy is driven by domestic consumption, less than one third by exports. Consumption rates in India are closer to Japan than they are in China which is a major export focused economy.

The services part of the economy continues to grow very briskly here, very strongly. Non-durable sector is growing strongly as well. And in the durable areas, there has been a bit of a slowdown, things like refrigerators and motor bikes have slowed down, those manufacturers making those products.

But cars are still selling quite well. There’s almost been you might say that the blue collar people have had to slow down their discretionary spending, but it hasn’t affected the white collar work force.

So in 2008, I think you will see eight to - 8.5% growth, somewhere along those lines. So this is a slight cooling down, a slight downshift if you will.

Now, a word about India, a diverse and very challenging place to be. In some ways this is not for the faint of heart, but it’s an exciting place to be and the scale of diversity is truly breathtaking here.

India in many ways is a study in contrast. A - 28 different states, 22 national languages, hundreds of dialects. They’re on the political level there are national parties, there are regional parties, this is a country with a huge Hindu majority, but it’s also the second largest Muslim population in the world.

It’s a continent, so there are many; there are regional markets, south, north, east, west, roughly speaking. And these markets have different rules, different business practices, and different standards, even the foods and the tastes are different.

And certainly the level of economic development is different where you had the more advanced states like Maharashtra and Gujarat have been recovering from almost $1000 where some of the poorest states like Bihar and UP, the per capita income is only around $400.

It is - another contrast is the young India versus conservative India or old India if you will. There are young people, young liberal India that are clamoring for change, clamoring for reform.

These are the folks who if you will they’re the ones who want the superior shopping experience.

And then there’s the older folks brought up during more socialist oriented times that when India was poorer that the major savers, there are left parties, there are right parties, but the left interestingly enough is attracting fewer and fewer younger people. They are very rich and they are very poor. More than one half the populations still lives under $2 a day and finding 2/3 of the population is in farming, a lot of its assistance farming.

At the same time we’ve all heard of places like Bangalore and Hyderabad with its world class IT services and there are other areas such as Pune and Chennai and Greater Delhi that are rising as advanced manufacturing sectors of the economy.

It has very highly educated elite with very elite technical schools. There are over 80,000 students that come to the United States to study a year. At the same time, illiteracy is very high and the public education system fails a lot of people frankly.

You will - when you arrive at the airport here you will see this phenomenal contrast between what one might say the physical infrastructure and the software infrastructure.

The airports in the major cities are being revitalized but still pretty decrepit and old frankly.

And - but then by the time you get to the office the next morning, the hotel that evening, you begin to see that softened infrastructure. The people are - speak English, they interact very, very well.

The next day you go to their offices, you’ll learn that the legal system is very similar in some ways. It’s a democracy, much like ours. Different, but still a democracy. Has orderly elections and we will have national elections within the next year.

It’s a democracy governed by a broad coalition, so democratic governments act like democratic governments in any election year. You keep the economy on an even keel and you take care of your voting base.

So it’s very, very interesting in that regard. And finally, the final contrast I want to highlight and is that it has a very dynamic private sector which I’m going to talk about.

But at the same time, a very, very inefficient state sector, state capitalism, where there’s a lot of state firms, either controlled by at the central level or by the states themselves.

And so that’s an area that is still in transition in India. Private sector, let’s talk a little bit about the private sector. Truly what’s driving this economy, what’s making the India success story is the private sector.

It’s with all that economic reforms that have happened in the last 10, 15 years it truly has unlocked entrepreneurial capabilities here that at one time Indians themselves probably didn’t imagine they had.

There’s a great pride and a great confidence as India embraces globalism. And they seek partnerships. They seek brands. They seek management know how. They seek technology.

They don’t want to just take the technology and run. India we find a lot of companies are really interesting in partnering, and given that so many live in the United States, go to the United States there’s a real appreciation for American brands.

Now a lot of the private sector companies have business models that are really based on volume and breakthrough growth, not on revenue per customer. So key to be successful here continues to be affordability.

As an example, the auto market. By the way it’s starting from a lower base, but it’s going very fast and at some point it will overtake the more mature Indian market.

But all the global car companies are here, and they’re learning to make money on small cars. Tata motors, some of you may have heard, has had a breakthrough, developed a breakthrough car to $2500.

Really breakthrough technology, a lot of the big players don’t know how they do it. But it will go on the street in the sales rooms in the next six months or so at - probably starting out around $2500.

And as I mentioned on the retail sector, there are foreign companies coming in and learning how to make deals today. And there are Indian companies that want to partner with American companies.

(Eileen) will talk more about the interest of Indian retailers and partnering with American companies. In the food franchise areas, we have a lot of companies entering the market.

That’s another great potential that (Eileen) will talk about, but certainly they are learning to cut prices to each - further down in the economic curve. Consumer goods, (unintelligible) goods for example, there’s an Indian company called Videocom that produces and sells a $66 washing machine.

And believe me, it is - works, and it’s aimed and it’s perfectly adaptable to the Indian market. In a country that is very hot, you don’t need to include in a machine such as this a drying cycle. So you save a lot of money and energy and product.

And Videocom the producer is one of the largest consumer companies you have here. Mobile phone sector, again, fastest growing market in the world, faster than China. Fifty to sixty million new subscribers each month and a lot of these subscribers increasingly are in the rural areas as the companies again learn how to sell further down the chain.

Now let’s move on a little bit to the - here we are, the metrics. This is really an incredible country and I hope if you haven’t been here you will visit. Two quotes; first quote is, “India is a country that will get rich before it gets old”. That’s from (Deepak Chain) of the (Kelarch) School of Business.

Second quote, “Growth is reshaping the lifestyles of Indian families”. That’s from Diana Farrell of McKinsey Global Institute. Not surprisingly when you have income levels doubling over the last ten years and the current growth rates expected to double again at - over the next ten years, then you can see how these points hold true.

India is a country that’s getting younger, where the age band from 20 to 49 years is rising over the next ten years, which will have tremendous implications for disposable incomes, for spending more and for indulging more.

And again companies like McKinsey and (Ichy Carne) have done studies and estimate that over the next 15 to 20 years, the Indian middle class will grow to about 500 million people, in other words, that many people will enter this higher level of income.

That’s about 40% of the population. At the very top end there are the global Indians who maybe number about a million or more, a little bit more households, but by 2020 will be almost 10 million and will have a huge amount of consumption.

These are the people who shop at the exclusive malls, they are local - they are very successful entrepreneurs and executives and we see some of these local and entrepreneurs bringing in American products, having a passion for American products.

And they’re also prioritizing their capital in this way. For example I recently attended in the last six months, two very unique American brand launches. One was Steuben Glass and you know part of coining, a very old American company dating back if I’m not mistaken to the 19th century.

Of the thirties perhaps and they were brought in by leading architectural and interior design firm which to me is a perfect fit when you have interior décor.

And the other is Judith Leiber bags which there was a spectacular opening here just a couple of months ago, and some of those bags which generations, you keep it forever, were running like $10,000 to $15,000.

And below these global Indians you have other groups that together, be they the senior government officials who make up the manager for large businesses professionals, rich farmers who make up one group, below that the up and coming college graduates, the midlevel officials, the traders.

And below that the small shopkeepers and farmers together these people today have purchasing power parity anywhere from $23,000 to over $100,000. So this is what the new class, the demographics, the consumption that’s driving the retail boom that (Eileen) will talk about.

And if some of you come on the mission, there will be visits, optional visits that you can take and some of you will want to go down to the Taj here in Delhi no doubt when you’re here.

But some of you might be interested in rushing to some of the malls in the area to see what’s really going on because it’s truly fascinating, especially when you go a little bit further outside the center city in a place here in Delhi like (Falitabard) which is a suburban area, it’s the third metro expansion in Delhi spilling over from Delhi metro.

And you should just have to see the residential subdivisions coming up, the malls that are sprouting up. That’s where there’s rising incomes, people are buying cars, and infrastructure is being put into place.

And that infrastructure is allowing people to live further and further and further out. In addition to the retail boom, I think in - because of these rising incomes, you’re going to see probably two other notable areas that will be interesting, two or three other notable areas.

One will be the growth of the health care market. Right now only 2% of the health sector is organized, but I think you’re going to see tremendous growth there parallel to what’s happening in the retail sectors.

Conglomerates rush in and are building (unintelligible) hospitals for the middle class. Leisure, resorts and all types of new models where there’s growing middle class as a way to do more than what they’re currently doing.

And travel is the final area, all with great potential. Okay, let’s see here. Here we are, okay. And very quickly here, I want to conclude very quickly here and simply say that US business is pouring into India and one of the notable things is how they’re coming here and doing more R&D.

Companies like General - sorry, companies like General, yes, General Electric who came in early and has a huge R&D center in Bangalore, IBM who has more than 100,000 employees in India at this time, as many as in United States.

(Praxie or Cummings), others, India is become a global hub for R&D, again not outsourcing from the United States but to become a center for India as well as become a global center for our global corporations to do something not just in India but for the whole world.

So this is a very, very important trend. And moving to the next slide, I think this is very important to see how US trade is just booming. US India trade is booming, but as you can see, our exports have recently taken off quite a bit in the last year from $10 billion to over $17 billion.

So this surge is 75% surge. US exports world wide are only growing at 12%, and so this is more of a doubling in the last couple of years. And as you can imagine its advanced technology including aerospace, advanced materials, information, communications technology, electronics, flexible manufacturing, etcetera.

And what you don’t see because this is manufactured well, it’s also the goods and services, our financial services, tourists in the United States, students in the United States are really, really taking off as well.

And the next slide also shows the other side of the picture which is US India investments. India because of its growth increasingly is becoming an important source of foreign investment, a source as well as a destination for FDI.

And US investments also took off back in 2002 and have just continued to shoot up, so US industry is very bullish on the Indian continent, you can see they’re coming in.

And for example, General Motors and Ford are expanding rapidly in this market. They’re building new car plans. Ford is also building an engine plant. These are not cars that are going to be exported back to the United States.

These are cars that are going to supply the Indian markets. US IT and telecom companies like Motorola, Dell, are also expanding here, again Motorola has built them, Nokia, both have built plants for - to take advantage of this huge growth in the mobile market.

And we’ll see other waves, other investment waves come. I think the next one coming is probably in the aerospace sector as India becomes a major purchaser, is already a major purchaser of civilian and defense air space equipment.

You’ll find the Boeings and Bells and Lockheed is also coming here. So final slide is our services. And again the numbers here reflect, the growth reflects what’s happening in the overall economy.

The economy is booming and our business is booming as well. And so just let me stop here, I talked a very long time, longer than I wanted, forgive me. But let me turn it over to (Eileen Mande) who will talk about the retail opportunities in this market. (Eileen)?

(Eileen Mande): Thank you. Thank you Carmen, good morning to everyone. I’m just going go through a couple of slides briefly to talk about the retail scenario and also touch upon franchising.

Basically to say that India is undergoing a retail revolution is an understatement. But rather it’s more like a cataclysmic change. And the main driver of this is there’s a huge shift on traditional markets to the organized retail sector.

And Carmen used the word boom a lot, and I apologize that I’m probably going to overuse the word boom and booming in the next couple slides, but really the retail sector is booming and it has been for the past five years.

To put this into perspective, in 2006, two years ago, the organized retail sector was only 3% of the overall shopping opportunities in India. Right now it’s 8% and by 2010, another two years it could increase to 22%.

And that of course means you know going into like what we would call like you know a formal store with you know things like with the warehouse and things stockpiled, the way that we’re used to going shopping and not in the traditional markets.

So right now we’re seeing that Indian consumers are demanding more shopping options, nicer places to shop and a wider variety of quality goods than have previously been offered.

Jumping to the next slide, the key drivers of this boom is basically as Carmen was mentioning before that the overall prosperity here in India, and you probably have already heard about the Indian success story with the burgeoning middle class.

But what makes this really impressive for a US retailer consumer bid company is that the actual salary levels actual - underestimate the purchasing power of the Indian consumer.

So for example if you have a 25 year old software programmer that’s making $20,000, from the US perspective that does not sound like a lot. But if you keep them running, the 25 year old is probably still living with his or her parents and doesn’t have any of the usual day to day expenses that a 25 year old would have in the US living alone, that person has pretty much his or her entire salary for discretionary income.

And we’re seeing younger you know educated professionals here spending that income on consumer goods, entertainment and travel, and of course the travel gives them more exposure and they see what people around the world have and they want to have that themselves.

So there’s that’s really among the main drivers here. Jumping to the next slide, this is just giving you a basic overview of the actual construction that’s taking place, and the numbers speak for themselves and they’re pretty impressive.

You really see cranes and construction taking place in every - throughout the entire country in every city and town. New malls and shopping facilities are springing up everywhere and what’s even more impressive is that the boom has also taken place in the second and third tier city.

So in addition to the big cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, you’re also seeing malls and strip - the local equivalent of a strip mall coming up in cities and towns that you probably haven’t heard of.

So malls are no longer considered a novelty here, and supermarkets are becoming a reality. I’m currently based in Calcutta and we have three large malls now and they’re also building three more large malls.

So basically there’s an unsatiated demand for places to shop. We work with the largest retailers throughout the country, and these retailers come to us asking for assistance to locate products and product suppliers in the United States.

And one of the main difficulties we have is that when they come to us, they don’t know what they want. They just know they want everything. And so we have to work with them to really narrow down the list and target what kind of consumers they are you know catering to and what kind of products they want.

This is just a short list of the ones we are currently with, working with and we can hook you up with these players and more if you’re interested in exploring the Indian market.

So franchising, I just wanted to touch upon this briefly because franchising is of course a very important sub-sector of retail here, and franchising is also undergoing a very dynamic growth here.

Franchises run prestige and consumer familiarity, so essentially we see this in the second and third tier cities when a franchise opens up and they are already familiar with the products or service because they’ve seen it in another place.

They are more likely to use it. We work very often with US franchises to help them find franchisers or master franchisers here, and we’ve had great success in this area. One of my colleagues, who will be answering questions later on, (Misha Doshi), took a delegation of 20 - of Indian franchisers to the international franchise expo in Washington just a few months ago.

So what are people buying here, or what are the best prospects? Basically everything. What you see on the screen is just a list of retailers that I mentioned two slides ago. These are the kind of things that they come to us and say that they need and they would like to source funding out of state.

This list is pretty extensive but it’s not exhaustive, so has basically almost everything under the sun. You’ll see everything from actual things to retail consultants, design services and retail equipment and also one important thing I’d like to mention is food and processed food is also among the top things that retailers need.

We at the commercial service don’t deal directly with food, but if that’s a sector that you’re interested in we can put you in touch with our colleagues at the Foreign Agricultural Service who can help you.

I should mention here that we have a requirement that all of the products and services must have a 51% US content for us to become directly involved with the US company to help them export here. And so this can be a little bit tricky regarding consumer goods because a lot of them are made in China.

So if you’re interested we can work with you to break down the you know manufacturing or the you know the intellectual property that goes into a given good or service to see if you are qualified for our assistance.

This is just showing an active trade lead. One of the retail companies approached (Manju) who is also on the call to - and she’s located in Bangalore, needing this type of equipment.

So you’ll see that this is the basic type of retail infrastructure to put up a, you know to put up a store. So right - this is a very live lead and we’re working to come up with a list of potential US companies.

A year ago in my neighborhood here in Calcutta we got our first quote unquote grocery store and what was really interesting is just watching how the people were being trained.

And not just the people working at the store, because of course if I were to sit down in front of a cash register, you know that would be a little bit daunting to learn how to use it too.

But also watching how the consumers were learning you know to stand in line and get receipts for different things and that was just a - you know a very interesting kind of social experiment for me.

So a lot is happening right now in this sector. These are just some - a list of some companies that we have helped, and the list of retail and franchise companies that we’ve helped is actually much longer than this, but we can’t share any company information without their knowledge and consent.

So we look forward - we hope to work with you either on the upcoming trade mission or in another capacity and working with you to help you explore the Indian market and part of the value added that we offer to you as companies is that we vet your product.

So if you’re insistent in coming to the market and working with us, we’ll tell you up front if your company has a strong class (vest) here. And so just having that kind of market knowledge and information is invaluable. And sometimes we do have to say no, but that again saves the company a lot of time and effort from you know saving them the expense and time of the trip here.

So I’m going to wrap up this section and turn it back to Carmen, but I will be available at the end for any questions you might have. Carmen?

Carmen D’Aloisio: Thank you (Eileen). Let me talk a little about yes, our operation here in India. I said India was a continent and we’re there. We have seven offices, perhaps we’re the largest operation in the whole commercial service network.

And again as we speak this evening we have (Manju) in Bangalore, (Ali) in Mumbai and Calcutta, (Eileen)’s in Calcutta and we’re here in New Delhi. So we’re really very well established, we know the local players.

We know problems American companies can get into at the local level. You know I noticed that on the call we have some companies that are in the cosmetic business and sometimes local issues come up and we advocate on behalf of American companies.

So we are really here to help you, obviously tonight we’re here to talk about the trade mission. But more broadly, we’re here to help you develop the market and to solve some of the major projects - problems that you face.

The FedEx commercial service partnership mission coming up in November is really a great opportunity to kill a number of birds with one stone if you will.

For those of you who want to enter the market, this is really a phenomenal networking, it’s a great informational learning, a great networking and partnering mission and actually meeting companies.

Because we as (Eileen) mentioned, we are very good at prescreening companies, and understanding your commercial needs very well, because we spend a lot of time talking to you and figuring out what that is and then helping you in the market by finding the right partners.

So it will be an opportunity to find partners, but also some of you who may have regulatory issues, this will be an opportunity to learn the answers to those problems, to meet officials who we introduce you to who then you can go back and refer to well I was here for this very large mission.

And I think it’s going to be - it’s going to open doors. And you’ll also get a lot of networking events as well that we’re doing, site visits and as I mentioned briefing.

So definitely we’re here for you and look forward to some of you joining us on the mission. But right now we have time for questions and we look forward to answering your questions.

I’m going to turn things back to Linda Abbruzzese.

Linda Abbruzzese: Thank you Carmen and thank you (Eileen). Now it looks like we have a sampling for - then three questions that we have in our queue. I’d like to let you know that if we’re not able to answer your questions today please take a moment of the contact information that is on your screen right now.

You can reach any one of these speakers and at then at any time. I would like to start with the first question; this is from (Elise Wolf). The question is what is the status of the proposed rule requiring the registration of each and every cosmetic product from each manufacturer and each plant which Mr. I guess (Nardera) noted in the last PCTC webinar India.

I don’t know if you know him, but that is the question.

Carmen D’Aloisio: Okay, thank you (Elise). Actually this is a very important area, we are lucky to have on the call tonight (Manju) from Bangalore who not only has worked to send companies to American and Asian trade shows such as Cosmoprof, but may have been involved in some of the policy work on behalf of clients.

(Manju), do you think you can take this question?

(Manju Sheri Fukan): Yeah, I just kind of wanted to a brief overview on the cosmetics sector which is the fastest growing, fast moving available section in the retail. But as far as registration and licensing going, really required for a foreign company if they factor in India.

But if it’s just for exports there aren’t any registration requirements unless that firm is a pharmaceutical which is actually not recognized in India at the moment.

But if it’s just purely for (unintelligible) purpose there really isn’t any registration requirements.

Linda Abbruzzese: Okay great, thank you. Next question is from (Sondra Snyder). Do foreign companies need to apply and receive a non-objection certificate before they can import cosmetic products?

Carmen D’Aloisio: This is another question for (Manju) I think. (Manju)?

(Manju Sheri Fukan): Linda could you repeat the question? I didn’t catch…

Linda Abbruzzese: Sure. This is from (Sondra Snyder). She wants to know do foreign companies need to apply and receive non-objection certificates before they can import cosmetic products?

(Manju Sheri Fukan): They do not.

Linda Abbruzzese: Okay. Great, thank you. Another question here is from (Ben Johns) who says are you going to open dedicated service center for this market and I really don’t know what specifically that means.

But is there a way that we can help assist I think with this market in India with the retail market, how do the commercial service assist for - in helping out US companies?

Carmen D’Aloisio: Okay. This is - hello? Hello this is Carmen again. So Linda, the question is - I’m not sure I understand the question, but you rephrased it a little bit, what was that again?

Linda Abbruzzese: Yeah, I believe this person would like to know how does the US commercial service help with the services - with the US company in the retail industry market in India. How does the US commercial service play a role in assisting US companies?

Carmen D’Aloisio: Right, right, right. Well I think we can play a role in each of our cities, because we have excellent relationships with the main domain players. And such as Reliance, such as Bharti, a lot of them, a lot of these big players by the way are hiring US and foreign personnel that have developed mega-stores around the world.

So I think one of the ways we - most important ways we can help is introductions and giving you access to the right people, helping you meet the stores.

I don’t know if (Eileen) or (Manju) or (Ali), if anyone would like to add something please feel free.

Linda Abbruzzese: Okay, thank you very much. The next question is from (Malique Desai), the question is what are the hurdles to overcome to do business in India?

Carmen D’Aloisio: Okay. Well that’s a very broad question, but a very good one. And I think key if you’re entering the market for example we note from the call that there’s a number of companies in the personal care business, and that there are clearly regulatory issues that need to be resolved or worked with registrations and so forth.

I think first and foremost finding the right partner is key and making sure that the partner has the capabilities to help you overcome the regulatory barriers, has the access into the various distribution channels.

Often there are multiple representatives that you will meet because this is a large market. So I think this is one of the hurdles that need to be overcome.

A second one that I believe is important to overcome is just the inertia of getting started in India. It’s a little bit far away; it’s a little bit expensive, especially if you come here during the heavy season with the hotels.

It can be, your initial effort to enter the market will require a budget and commitment I think is going to be very, very important. When it comes to business practices and regulatory problems, we certainly spend a lot of time in all our regions helping companies overcome these problems.

And it’s a big part; if I can put it this way it’s a big part of our business or our portfolio here in Delhi where you have a lot of the you know the government agencies that you have to deal with.

(Eileen), do you want to add something as to what you think some of the biggest hurdles are?

(Eileen Mande): No, I think you covered it well.

Carmen D’Aloisio: Okay. How about you (Ali), anything you’d like to add?

(Ali Askar Matawalla): Actually I wanted to add that you know when you mention one of the biggest hurdles is finding the right partner; in fact we in the commercial services specialize in that to help you find the right partner.

Therefore this - the FedEx mission would be a good (aperture) if you’re looking for a partner where we would be arranging qualified meetings with potential partners for you.

Carmen D’Aloisio: Excellent, yeah. Right, right. That’s - and it’s a big part of our - it’s a big part of the business that we do on a day to day basis for American companies, correct?

(Ali Askar Matawalla): That’s right.

Linda Abbruzzese: Okay great. Thank you everybody and everyone, I believe that’s all the questions we have right now. Remember you who might have questions afterwards, please note the contact information that’s on your screen.

You can contact any one of our speakers at these email addresses. Also I’d like to let you know that the PowerPoint presentation slides, a transcript and an archived webinar will also be on our expert.gov website, that website is www.export.gov and there is a link on the right hand side that is called view webinar where you can locate the archived webinar.

Also please check out the website, its www.fedex.com/thinkbaseindia, and www.buyusa.gov/India for more information on India. And also our export, the US Commercial Services website is www.export.gov/cs for more information on exporting and other webinar events.

Thank you everybody for joining us. Please check your email boxes for more information on upcoming webinars. Good bye.

Coordinator: Thank you for participating in today’s conference call, you may disconnect at this time.

END