The US experience suggests that it is harder to trade online in direct goods than indirect ones, as direct goods must often be tailored to a particular production process. This makes buyers cautious about changing the way they buy them. Second, Indian supply chains are less efficient and more fragmented. Indian firms lag in performance on other indicators of supply-chain efficiency. Third, weak infrastructure is unable to support e-Commerce.
Most Asian countries lack an efficient on-line payments system.
Good third-party logistics providers are rare. And neither the mechanisms for managing supplier credit risks nor legal sanctions against bad debtors are well developed. The absence of such infrastructure will be a bottleneck to the development of B2B e-Commerce. Start with standard commodities, and aim for complex goods later, possibly offering digital asset-management software that allows transfer of engineering designs. Fortunately, marketplaces targeting direct goods can obtain huge savings for members in industries with few buyers.