A recently-released report titled India Packaging Industry Outlook FY’2025 and Operational Analysis of Online B2B Platforms in India, provides a comprehensive analysis of the packaging industry and online B2B (business to business) space in India, providing an operational model of a vertical online B2B platform for the packaging Industry.
The report provides the industry size of the packaging industry in India, consumption patterns across the world, ecosystem analysis of packaging industry and online B2B place, service portfolio of online B2B platform along with penetration level of various services.
It further provides segmentation analysis of the packaging industry on the basis of end-users, nature of packaging and material of packaging and regional analysis on the basis of consumption.
The report also talks about new trends witnessed in the industry along with new strategies and future ways forward for an online B2B packaging platform to move ahead.
The report discusses the competition in the packaging industry of India and online B2B platforms in India, demand & supply trends along with important operational parameters and bottlenecks faced by packaging manufacturing enterprises across India.
The report concludes with the future outlook for packaging industries and future developments in the online B2B space of India along with a feasibility report for establishing a packaging focussed vertical online B2B platform and a viable operating model and recommendations for value-added services for enhanced portfolio.
Packaging Industry
Market Overview
The presence of many entities including numerous manufacturers provides fierce competition.
MSMEs contribute a major part of the revenue generated by the Indian packaging industry.
Large scale players are few in numbers but contribute a significant amount in the overall revenue in the industry.
The Indian packaging industry is the fifth fastest-growing industry in India, contributing 8 per cent to the global packaging industry revenue.
Competition Scenario
The competition is fierce with continuous price wars occurring in the market. Companies compete on the basis of the quality of material, innovative designs, production capacity, past projects, etc. ‘Uflex’ is the biggest player in terms of revenue generated in the industry.
The players and their manufacturing capacity is evenly spread across the country with no visible geographical concentration in the market.
Industry Bottlenecks Faced
Rapid changes in technology and high turnaround time of machinery cause problems for the manufacturers.
Lack of skilled manpower makes it very difficult to meet global standards. Inefficient utilisation of capacity also creates difficulty to reach the break-even point.
Difficulty in the sourcing of raw materials, inefficient logistic infrastructure and lack of credit facilities is few other bottlenecks in the industry.
E-Commerce Facilitating Growth of Industry
Expansion of e-commerce around the country is enabling changes in consumer preferences which have further increased the importance of product sustainability and less wastage.
The packaging industry is bound to witness several cost-cutting mechanisms along with margin expansion and an inclination towards digitisation and process automation to meet the rising demand from the end-user industries.
Future Strategies-The Way Forward
Research and development along with innovation would pave the way for the market facilitating agile SKU proliferation to facilitate e-commerce so as to provide the ability to have a global presence with enhanced and strategic mergers and acquisition activities in order to have a better collaboration with various entities present in the country and a special focus on sustainable activities and new designs leading with a personalised experience.
Online B2B Platform Market in India
Industry Overview
There are 20 B2B platforms catering only to the manufacturing MSMEs across India.
The industry is at a nascent stage and holds high potential for growth in the future.
The highest user penetration is of Online Listing and Marketplace as many of MSME use this service to generate business leads.
SaaS has not been able to gain much traction and is very rarely used as of now.
Competition Scenario
The competition is not very high in the industry as there is a lack of vertical platform players in the market, but it is expected with the emergence of new players in the future, the industry competition would become fierce.
In the online listing & marketplaces segment, the players compete on the basis of listing charges and commission rates.
Industry Bottlenecks Faced
Bad quality of leads along with low conversion rates, high commission charges, leading to loss of margins, lack of end-to-end solutions in lots of platforms, lack of quality checking procedures on platforms leading to loss of repetitive business and stringent payment terms and often there is a lack of good credit facilities in the industry, all above factors are considered the major bottlenecks in the industry by players as well as by MSME manufacturers.
Future Strategies-The Way Forward
Special focus on vertical marketplace needs to be given in order to acquire expertise.
International competition across the globe will be the next big thing.
Development of new categories of retail and wholesale would be leading the innovation scenario, while cost optimisation across various service streams will become important along with harnessing Artificial Intelligence, data analytics as well as deep learning algorithms to facilitate and identify demand and trend analysis in advance for exploiting future growth opportunity.