A buyer from Chicago once spent six days and two flights meeting fourteen suppliers across Delhi and Surat, and came home with a shortlist that a week of desk work would have produced for free, minus three names. One of the missing names turned out to have no production at all, just a phone, a website and a catalog built from stock photographs. Every tell had been visible from a laptop in Illinois before a single airfare was spent.
Days One and Two: Registries the Government Backs
Start with the GSTIN. Every legitimate Indian business carries a Goods and Services Tax registration number, and the public portal shows the legal name, the state of registration, the registration date and the current status, whether active, cancelled or suspended. Ask for the GSTIN early, look it up yourself, and check that the legal name matches the name on their quotations, invoices and bank account. A mismatch anywhere in that chain is a reason to stop right there.
Then the IEC, the import-export code, a ten-digit number issued by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. Without one, a company cannot export commercially from India, so a self-described manufacturer-exporter with no IEC is either about to route your order through someone else's licence or about to become your problem. The DGFT site lets you verify the code against the entity name in minutes.
Indian textile trade lives on WhatsApp, and buyers who run the channel well outpace those who wait on email. Thread discipline, photo evidence, time-zone rhythm and escalation etiquette, from our side of the desk.
Vetting an Indian Supplier in One Week — Desk Checks That Beat a Flight to Surat
A one-week desk protocol for vetting Indian textile suppliers without flying over: government registries, reference calls, live video walkthroughs and a small paid sample order. Learn the red flags that surface before money ever moves.
Ajmera Export 7 Aug 20267 min read
For companies claiming to be private limited, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs registry shows the incorporation date, the directors and any registered charges. A company registered eight months ago presenting a decade of export history is telling you a story, not a record. All three checks are free, public, and finishable in an evening with a cup of tea.
Days Three and Four: References and the Trail They Leave
Ask for two or three buyers in your own region who have ordered more than once, then actually call them. The useful question is not whether the supplier is good; it is what went wrong on the first order and how it was fixed. A supplier who claims nothing has ever gone wrong has either not shipped enough or is not being described honestly.
Ask the supplier for recent export references too, a shipping bill number or a redacted bill of lading set with commercial values blanked out, which is standard practice and no insult to request. If you want more certainty, export data services track container movements by company name, and a small subscription confirms whether a supplier genuinely ships to your market at the volumes they claim.
Watch the WhatsApp trail meanwhile, because it is the most honest data you will get. Real desks answer specific questions specifically: which GSM, which stitching, which packing, which dispatch week. Vague agreement with everything you suggest is a middleman's tell, or worse, and experienced buyers treat it exactly that way.
Day Five: The Live Video Walkthrough
Ask for a live video call that walks their actual floor, on a day you pick, rather than a polished recorded tour. A recording proves that a building existed somewhere at some point; a live call on demand proves the floor is theirs and operating today. Ask to see specific stations instead of a highlight reel: the fabric store, the stitching lines, the QC table, and the packing section with somebody's order mid-carton.
One Surat-specific point that trips up first-time buyers: the city's production genuinely runs as a cluster. Weaving, dyeing, printing, embroidery and final stitching often sit with different specialised units that have worked together for years, and your supplier's real skill is coordinating that chain reliably. If a supplier shows you their embroidery partner's karigar workshop on the live call, that is the real industry, not a confession. The outfits claiming every single process under one roof are often describing somebody else's roof, and the on-demand walkthrough has a way of catching them out.
A disclosure from our own floor: on a live walkthrough with us you will see stitching lines, the QC table and an order going into cartons, and you will also hear us say plainly that dyeing and embroidery happen at partner units we have worked with for a generation. We would rather introduce you to our karigars than perform the fiction of owning every process in one shed.
Days Six and Seven: The Sample Order as the Real Test
A small, paid sample order is the truest audit in this trade. Watch how it is quoted: a genuine supplier quotes with structure, fabric and GSM, work type, packing, carton, delivery window, because that is how they cost internally and they cannot suddenly produce a different style of quotation. When the samples land, check them against the agreed spec: fabric weight and hand feel, stitch density, measurements against the size chart, finishing, packaging. Then notice how the whole process felt, because how a supplier handles your small order is exactly how they will handle your large one, only with less of your attention.
The red flags that surface during the week, collected in one place:
Catalogs built entirely from stock photographs; a reverse image search takes minutes and finds the same saree modelling for five different manufacturers
Pressure pricing, meaning a quote valid only if you confirm today, and a price that is somehow always about to rise
Repeated refusal to do a live video call, with escalating excuses
GST, IEC or bank details that do not match the name on the quotation
A number with no breakdown, and irritation when you ask for one
Any two of those together and you already have your answer. What does one live call prove that a recorded tour does not? That the floor exists on the day you asked, which is the entire point of the exercise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I really vet an Indian supplier without visiting India?
For a first order, yes, and often better than a visit manages. A week of registry checks, reference calls and a live walkthrough filters out the non-operators before you have spent an airfare or a rupee. Save the trip for when volumes justify it.
What is an IEC number and why does it matter?
It is the ten-digit import-export code issued by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, and it is mandatory for commercial export from India. No verifiable IEC means your goods travel on someone else's licence, and you deserve to know whose before paying.
How do I check a GST number online?
Take the GSTIN from the supplier's invoice, enter it on the public GST portal, and read the legal name, state, registration date and status. The legal name should match their quotation and bank account exactly.
Should I expect samples to be free?
Not from a serious exporter, and you should not want them to be. Paying a fair sample cost tells you how the supplier treats a paying customer, which is precisely the behaviour you are auditing before larger money moves.
What if the supplier turns out to be a trader, not a manufacturer?
Traders are a legitimate part of this trade, particularly in Surat's cluster structure, where coordinating dyeing, printing and embroidery units is a real skill. The problem is never trading; it is misrepresentation, and the desk checks exist to catch the second.
When is a visit to Surat actually worth it?
From the second or third order onwards, once a relationship has passed the desk checks and volumes justify the trip. Buyers who walk the markets with their supplier make better range decisions than buyers who never do, so treat the visit as a reward for passing vetting, not a substitute for it.
We are comfortable being vetted exactly this way: our GSTIN, IEC and trade references go to serious buyers on request, and we will walk our floor on a live call any working day. Message us on WhatsApp with your product list, and ask for a paid sample set before you commit to any programme.
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