Freelance Selling-Buying Agents

How much to charge in India? Criteria?

[anthonil]

Starting a proprietorship in India to introduce Indian Exporters to my home country's importers or vice versa...Industrial sectors. Will work as a rep office and will be doing technical translation to/from both languages as well as taking the visitors around in India to trade fairs etc. What to charge as a fee? Cost + a percentage for secured biz? Any ideas appreciated..thanks.

Ms living in Bangalore

[anallawalla]

You need to have a goal of a certain income level and you should be able to work out how many items in your menu of offerings are needed to reach that goal, then apply real-world pricing to see if the numbers add up. Work out the size of the office and staff that you will need and plan to make a loss/break even in the early days until you get some steady clients.

e.g. if your figure is $1000/day, then can you justify charging $5000, say, to accompany a group to a trade show if the show lasts one day and you need four days to organise everything? IOW, you can charge what the market will bear at the high end and enough to survive in the short term at the low end. Start at the high end if you can.

[anthonil]

Let me tell you more about what I am targetting to do.
First of all, I will start working from home, my only cost will be internet, telephone, fax etc.

I already have a client now, in widget industry and is looking for some distributorship of an indian widget company in my home country.

I had to search the net, yellow pages, several other contacts I have to find the companies that could have his specific requirements. I contacted them and I am already receiving offers. If the lead takes us to a biz contract we will be talking about hundreds of thousands dollars... I think I'd rather take a percentage on the whole deal but am not sure how much.

On the other hand I will not always receive business from big companies in which the percentage would not feed me let's say. Maybe I should ask a certain fee for a market search that gives a target 10 companies then, then for any deal less than let's say 100.000 dollars I charge an x amount overall..

Anyone out there doing a similar biz?

[edited by: bill at 12:07 am (utc) on Oct. 21, 2004]
[edit reason] widget-ize [/edit]

[anallawalla]

I later saw the other thread and it made more sense. As English is not that common in your country and your countrymen are not known to go to India in large numbers, you are in a good position to get this niche.

Commission agents have long existed in India, so there is precedent in the Indian business community. You just need a good legal framework to prevent the buyer and seller from bypassing you. Perhaps you can create a distributor company in your country so that the buyer and seller never know each other.

Your widgets will probably have competition from China, so you will need to be constantly on the lookout. Good luck.

[vibgyor79]

I am not sure what fees you should charge. Anyway, I think Indian B2B marketplaces like ITNation.com might help you in your venture.