EximDataProvider

IND imports ▲ 4.2%USA coffee 0901 ▲ 11.8%VNM exports ▲ 6.1%BRA 0901.11 ▲ 9.4%DEU machinery ▲ 2.7%Last refresh: 2026-08-01

36 guides

Trade data insights

Practical guides on using import export data — finding buyers, verifying suppliers, classifying goods, documentation, pricing and what a customs record can and cannot tell you.

Thirty-six guides on using import export data in practice — how goods are classified, what the paperwork actually requires, how to find a buyer or check a supplier, how to build a price you can defend, and where the record misleads you if you read it carelessly. They are written to be usable rather than promotional: each one sets out a method, states what the data cannot answer, and links to the pages where you can run it.

Classification and duty

The tariff line decides the duty, the restrictions and every statistic about the product. Everything else in international trade is downstream of getting it right.

HS Codes Explained: Structure, Digits and Why They Matter

Six digits are the same everywhere in the world. Everything after that is national. Understanding the split saves you duty, delay and penalties.

Seven HS Code Classification Mistakes That Cost Money

Classification decides duty, restriction and every statistic in the trade record. These are the errors that recur, and what each one costs.

Indian Import Duty: The Components and How They Stack

Duty is not one number. It is a sequence of components applied in order, each on a base that includes the ones before it.

Rules of Origin: Why a Trade Agreement Might Not Help You

A free trade agreement lowers duty for goods that originate in a member country. Deciding whether yours do is the entire difficulty.

Duty Drawback and Export Incentives, Explained

Schemes that return embedded taxes and duties to exporters. Understanding which one applies changes the economics of an order.

How Customs Clearance Works in India

From arrival to release, what actually happens to a consignment and where the delays come from.

Documents, payment and terms

Who pays for what, where risk passes, and why a bank rejects a presentation over a word. The paperwork is unforgiving about sequence and consistency rather than about difficulty.

Incoterms Explained: Who Pays for What, and Where Risk Passes

Eleven three-letter terms decide who arranges carriage, who pays for it, and the exact point at which a shipment stops being your problem.

How to Read a Bill of Lading

A bill of lading is three documents at once: a receipt, a contract of carriage and a document of title. Reading it properly tells you who is really behind a shipment.

What a Shipping Bill Is and What It Records

The export declaration filed with Indian customs. Nothing leaves the country without one, and everything in the export record derives from it.

Export Documentation Checklist for Indian Exporters

What has to exist, who issues it, and the order in which it is normally produced for a consignment leaving India.

Letters of Credit: How the Documents Decide Who Gets Paid

A bank pays against documents, not against goods. Understanding that single sentence prevents most letter-of-credit disasters.

IEC Code: What It Is and When You Need One

A ten-digit identifier issued to Indian businesses that trade across the border. Without it, a consignment cannot be declared.

FOB, CIF and What a Declared Value Actually Contains

Two consignments at the same declared value can represent very different prices. What the number includes is the whole question.

Finding and checking counterparties

Every company in an import record is already buying the category, and every exporter carries a shipping history that cannot be arranged retrospectively. This is what the data is best at.

How to Find Buyers Using Import Data (Step by Step)

Every company in an import record is already buying your product category. Here is how to turn that record into a working prospect list.

How to Build a Buyer List That Converts

A long list is easy. A list where most names are reachable, relevant and currently buying takes four filters and about a day.

How to Verify a Supplier Before You Pay

A website and a slick catalogue prove nothing. A shipment history proves a lot. Here is the check to run before money moves.

Finding Suppliers in a Country You Do Not Know

Start from the export record, not from a search engine. Companies that ship are a smaller and far more useful set than companies that advertise.

Import Data vs Supplier Directories: Which Should You Trust?

One lists companies that registered themselves. The other lists companies that actually shipped. The difference decides how much time you waste.

Sanctions Screening and Trade Compliance Basics

Compliance failure is not usually deliberate. It is a counterparty, an end use or a routing that nobody checked.

Pricing and negotiation

Declared values are assessable values rather than invoices, but aggregated carefully they become the most credible external price reference most categories have.

What Is Landed Cost and How Do You Calculate It?

The invoice price is the smallest part of what you actually pay. Landed cost is the number that decides whether a deal makes money.

How to Price for Export Without Guessing

Build the price from landed cost backwards, then check it against what comparable consignments actually declared.

Negotiating With Unit Price Data

A declared unit value is not a quotation, but it is the most credible number you can put on a table that you did not get from the other side.

Markets and competition

Sizing real demand, reading the incumbent supply base, and watching a named competitor change origin or launch a line before anyone announces it.

Choosing Your First Export Market

Pick on serviceability first and size second. The largest market you cannot supply is worth less than the mid-size one you can.

Reading Trade Data for Market Entry Decisions

Before you commit to a market, the customs record already tells you whether demand exists, who serves it, and what it pays.

Using Trade Data for Market Research

A customs record answers questions a survey cannot, and cannot answer questions a survey can. Knowing which is which saves a lot of wasted work.

Competitor Analysis With Trade Data

Once you can search by company name, competitive research stops being inference and starts being observation.

Quality, Compliance and Certification for Exports

Regulation is a gate, not a preference. Markets you cannot certify for are not markets, regardless of how large they are.

Ten Export Mistakes That Repeat

None of these are exotic. They are the same ten failures, in roughly the same order, in almost every first export programme.

Logistics and lanes

The port pair on a record is the closest thing to a free freight quotation, and the box you ship in constrains what you can ship, what it costs and how long it takes.

Container Types and Shipping Modes

The box you ship in constrains what you can ship, what it costs and how long it takes. Choosing it late is expensive.

Air Freight or Sea Freight: Making the Call

The decision is not about speed, it is about what speed is worth against what it costs for your particular cargo.

Reading Port Data for Logistics Decisions

The port pair on a record is the closest thing to a free freight quotation, and it settles arguments that otherwise run on assertion.

Inland Container Depots: Why the ICD Matters

Most Indian consignments clear inland, not at the coast. Which depot a shipment moves through tells you roughly where the counterparty is.

Cold Chain and Perishable Exports

Perishables fail in the gaps between legs, not in the middle of them. The handovers are where the cold chain breaks.

Reading the data honestly

Reporting lag, seasonality and unresolved company names account for almost every wrong conclusion drawn from trade statistics. All three are avoidable once named.

Seasonality: Why One Month of Trade Data Misleads

Almost every traded product has a buying calendar. Reading a single period against no baseline produces confident, wrong conclusions.

How Often Trade Data Is Updated, and Why It Varies

Refresh cycles are set by customs authorities, not by data providers. Knowing the lag for your market prevents a whole class of false conclusions.

Why Company Names Are Messy in Trade Data

The same business appears under a dozen spellings across declarations. Entity resolution is the unglamorous work that decides whether an analysis is right.