GS1 India: A Standards Organisation

 India is expected to be a $5 trillion economy by 2025, and SMEs are making the major contribution towards this milestone. Thousands of SMEs manufacture consumer products which are sold through retail chains and online marketplaces. One of the essential requirements for SME manufacturers/brand owners to sell their products through retail chains and e-marketplaces is to label them with unique product codes, also known as GTINs (EAN/UPC). Whether you are introducing your product in the market or taking your company to the next level, GTINs (EAN/UPC) provide a unique identity to your products that helps you in listing products with buyers and achieving supply chain visibility and efficiency.  Why should you label your products with GTINs(EAN/UPC)?  Over 2 million brand owners use GTINs across the globe, making it a de-facto standard for the retail industry worldwide.  Some of the benefits of GTINs (EAN/UPC) for your business are listed below. 1.  Higher search ra...

  No matter what the size of your business is or what product line you have, there are enough online marketplaces to give you avenues to host your products. Whether you are a home-grown brand or manufacturing unit, having your products listed on websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket, etc., enhances your chances of sales. But selling on these portals is easier said than done. To list your products on popular e-marketplaces, you need to accurately identify your products with unique product codes. Why is it a requisite? E-marketplaces need a unique identity on products to list them in their system. It is simply because in the absence of unique product identity, the chances of wrong invoicing, delivery, returns, etc., will increase manifolds. To ensure that you are invoiced for the product that is selected, and then the right product is delivered at your doorstep, unique product codes ( GTIN - UPC/EAN) play a critical role. These numbers form an important bridge between online lis...

  In this digital age, where the world is literally at our fingertips, it has become immensely easy to find and purchase things we need across the globe in just a few clicks. The World Wide Web has provided an opportunity to manufacturing companies, of all sizes, to connect with consumers like never before. One of the challenges brands face whilst using this opportunity and listing their products at e-marketplaces is low visibility. Since most of the consumers search the product category to find the products, listings with low search ranking never appear. With a humongous number of brands under every category, listed online, there is always a need to cut through the clutter. The question here is, how to do that. Of course, there is no one formula to do it but various small steps help. For example —  Did you know, by identifying your products with unique barcode numbers (GTINs —  Global Trade Item Numbers ) and using the same in page codes, you can increase Google ranking of your p...

 Having spent a lot of years visiting retail stores and outlets, we all must have witnessed a barcode on the packaging of the product that displays a specific pattern of stripes. What we also do notice is that these lines are composed of some numbers or codes which are framed to be scanned by optical readers. Since the lines correspond to a list of numbers, it gets easy to look up any product with a barcode simply by matching those numbers to an entry which is made in a database at the check-out of a retail store. It is interesting to note here that barcodes also play a key role in supply chains, enabling parties like retailers, manufacturers, transport providers, etc., to automatically identify and track products as they move from manufacturing units to the consumer, and hence enable product recalls, detect counterfeits, etc.. What is a genuine barcode number? As we understand the many benefits of barcode numbers, it is important to know that not all barcode numbers can provide th...