In the half year since US President Donald Trump slapped punitive tariffs on Indian goods, Manish Bhatia’s colleagues at Indo Count Industries, the world’s largest maker of bed linen by capacity, have been busily courting new customers from France to New Zealand.
“We need to diversify,” said Bhatia, chief financial officer at Mumbai-based Indo Count, which relies on US buyers such as Walmart for about 70 per cent of its mainstay bed sheet sales but aims to reduce that to less than half within three years. “You cannot depend on one country.”
It is an effort being mirrored by exporters across India — and one Bhatia hopes will get a boost this week as Indian negotiators race to complete a new trade deal with the EU, a pact that would be the latest in a series sealed by New Delhi since Trump’s tariff offensive in August.