Bharat Mandot Of Stelcore Group On The Hidden Costs Of Taking Indian Brands Global

What’s driving the next phase of India’s export story? It’s no longer just manufacturing capacity or shipping lanes, but the infrastructure that quietly powers cross-border commerce.

For years, most Indian brands treated international expansion as an afterthought. They usually entered overseas markets only after receiving inquiries from abroad, shipping a few orders through online marketplaces, or seeing unexpected demand from the Indian diaspora. Very few were built with global customers in mind from day one.

The playbook is now changing. Founders are thinking about international markets from day one, planning for pricing, product compliance, tax structures, fulfilment and localisation well before their first overseas sale.

This shift is showing up in the numbers. India’s cross-border ecommerce market is projected to grow from $48 Mn in 2025 to nearly $208 Mn by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 17.69%. At the same time, marketplace-led exports are growing too.

Amazon’s Global Selling programme now has more than 2 Lakh Indian exporters across 28 states, with cumulative ecommerce exports crossing $20 Bn in 2025 and an ambition to reach $80 Bn by 2030.

While entering a new market has become easier, scaling sustainably remains a different challenge altogether. This is because every geography comes with its own set of customs regulations, tax obligations, Importer-of-Record requirements, warehousing models, returns and payment cycles. 

Without the right infrastructure, brands often see growing revenues accompanied by shrinking margins. To understand what it really takes to build a durable global business, Inc42 spoke with Bharat Mandot, chairman of Stelcore Group, who shared why cross-border expansion is ultimately an infrastructure problem, how founders should evaluate international markets, and why healthy domestic unit economics are a prerequisite before looking overseas.

Here are the edited excerpts…

Inc42: You began your career at PwC before spending 14+ years building trade infrastructure at Stelcore. When did you realise backend infrastructure, not marketing, was the real bottleneck for brands scaling overseas?

Bharat Mandot: I started my career in finance because I enjoyed understanding how businesses work. At PwC, I worked with companies across industries, but over time I realised that financial statements only tell you what has already happened. I became more interested in understanding what actually helps businesses grow.

That curiosity led me into international trade.

Over the last 14 years at Stelcore, I have worked closely with thousands of businesses trying to enter new markets. What became very clear was that most brands didn’t fail because of their products or demand. They failed because of everything happening behind the scenes.

A brand could have great marketing and strong customer demand, but if customs delayed shipments, taxes weren’t handled correctly, inventory wasn’t available locally, or payments took months to settle, growth would simply stop.

That’s when I realised global commerce was not a marketing but an infrastructure problem.

Inc42: Across 3,000+ brand engagements that you’ve done, what separates a brand that builds a durable international business from one that doesn’t?

Bharat Mandot: Brands that succeed internationally think about building a business and not just shipping products. The brands that scale invest in local inventory, predictable delivery, customer support, returns management and consistent availability. They behave like a local business, even though they operate globally.

Brands that struggle usually rely on shipping every order from India. Delivery becomes slow, returns become expensive, customer experience suffers and repeat purchases decline.

The biggest breakdown happens between customer acquisition and customer retention. Getting the first sale is marketing. Getting the second, third and tenth sale depends on operational excellence: that is where long-term international businesses are built.

Inc42: Beyond vanity metrics like market size or diaspora presence, what should actually drive market selection and once a market is chosen, how should a brand decide between marketplace-first, owned D2C, or a hybrid entry? 

Bharat Mandot: Many companies choose markets because they hear the market is huge. That is rarely the right reason. Instead, brands should ask three questions: 

• Is there real demand for my category? 
• Can I deliver profitably? 
• Can I operate efficiently? 

A smaller market with better margins is often a smarter choice than a very large but highly competitive one.

On channels, I don’t believe there is one universal answer. But in most cases, I recommend a hybrid strategy: use marketplaces to understand demand and customer behaviour, while simultaneously building your own D2C presence for long-term brand equity. The objective should be to build multiple channels that work together.

Inc42: If a brand is entering two or three markets over 12-18 months, what does a realistic sequencing plan look like, and what’s the most common mistake you see?  

Bharat Mandot: Expansion should happen step by step. I generally advise brands to prove one market before opening the next. The first few months should focus on validating demand, understanding customer behaviour and building stable operations. Only after those fundamentals are working should the company move into another geography.

The biggest mistake founders make is to launch everywhere at the same time. Every country has different regulations, and managing multiple new markets simultaneously creates unnecessary complexity and consumes working capital much faster than expected.

Inc42: Importer-of-Record structures and local tax setups stay invisible until something goes wrong. What shortcuts do brands take, and what does it cost when a shipment gets frozen or a marketplace account suspended?

Bharat Mandot: Compliance is one of those areas that nobody talks about until there is a problem, and by then the cost is already high. Some brands try to save money by using informal import arrangements, incorrect product classifications or incomplete documentation. Others rely on third parties without understanding who is actually responsible for compliance.

These shortcuts may appear inexpensive initially, but create major risks later. A shipment can remain stuck at customs for weeks, marketplace accounts may be suspended, products may miss seasonal demand, and working capital remains blocked. 

In international commerce, compliance should never be viewed as a cost. It is an investment that protects both revenue and reputation.

Inc42: Where do brands most commonly miscalculate the cost of warehousing, 3PL fulfilment, cross-border returns and currency repatriation? Also, walk us through how a product that’s profitable in India can turn unviable once freight, tariffs, marketplace commissions and local marketing are stacked on. 

Bharat Mandot: Most founders calculate freight, and very few calculate the total cost of operating locally. Be it warehousing to currency conversion and local taxes, everything adds up in the end. Put them together, and they can reduce profitability. In our experience, brands underestimate these operational costs by around 10-20%, depending on market and category, and that difference can completely change the economics of expansion. 

The solution is to build the complete operating cost model before entering the market, not after the first shipment has arrived.

The other mistake is expecting aggressive growth where the baseline is effectively zero. Every international market has to be built from scratch. You need to create brand awareness, earn customer trust, establish distribution and optimise operations. 

To avoid making a profitable product unviable to import, brands should build country-level unit economics before expanding and not rely on domestic profitability alone. I’d say a product that has 60-65% domestic gross margin has enough room to absorb these costs. 

Inc42: Why does working capital become so much harder to manage once inventory sits across multiple countries? How should a CFO stress-test an expansion plan before releasing capital for it?

Bharat Mandot: I feel that products need to be available where demand is being created, without locking up excess capital in inventory. Before expanding, founders should clearly define the company’s risk appetite. I encourage founders to stress-test three scenarios:

• What if sales are 30-40% lower than projected?
• What if inventory takes twice as long to sell?
• What if freight costs or exchange rates act against you?

If the business can comfortably withstand these scenarios, the expansion plan is much stronger. 

Inc42: Do you expect Indian D2C brands to keep treating international markets as opportunistic export channels, or will more brands be architected as global businesses from day one?

Bharat Mandot: We are entering a very different phase. A few years ago, most Indian brands viewed international markets as an additional sales opportunity, but today, global customers are kept in mind from the very beginning. 

Founders are considering international pricing, packaging, compliance, digital marketing and supply chains much earlier than before. And with the right technology and infrastructure, even a young D2C brand can launch in multiple countries without setting up local entities or building large teams.

Over the next five years, I believe we will see many more Indian brands designed as ‘global-first’ businesses, where international revenue is part of the business model from day one, not an afterthought.

India has the products, manufacturing capability and entrepreneurial talent to build global consumer brands. The missing piece has always been the infrastructure to make global expansion simple. That’s the gap we’re working to solve.

The post Bharat Mandot Of Stelcore Group On The Hidden Costs Of Taking Indian Brands Global appeared first on Inc42 Media.