Meet Meghla Bhardwaj: Organizer of Global Sources Summit & Founder of India Sourcing Trip
Michelle Maldonado – Meghla, thank you so much for joining us today.
We are so excited to hear all about what you’re up to. Ladies and gentlemen listening to this video, this is Meghla. She is an organizer at the Global Sources Summit and also the founder of India Sourcing Trip, and she’s here to talk to us about what she’s been up to.
Meghla, tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do…
Meghla Bhardwaj – Thank you so much, Michelle, for having me today over here. I’m the organizer of a conference called Global Sources Summit and I’ve been organizing this conference for four years now, since 2016. It was a physical summit in Hong Kong held twice a year. But of course now thanks to COVID, we’re doing the summit virtually. And my background is in sourcing. I have been working in the sourcing industry for almost 20 years. I worked in India, China, Philippines, and I’m currently in Singapore. And I also organize a sourcing trip to India called India Sourcing Trip, and CJ also joined us at the previous India Sourcing Trip last year.
Michelle Maldonado – Okay. That’s a great introduction. Tell us about what’s the best thing you enjoy about what you do?
Meghla Bhardwaj – The best thing that I like is meeting so many different people from around the world, learning all about how they run their businesses and getting their perspectives on so many different things and also learning about what’s going on in the exciting world of Amazon and e-commerce. There’s so much happening and it’s one of the fastest growing industries in the world. I also like helping people and with my India Sourcing Trip, for example, I’ve helped so many people source products from India and helped them connect with suppliers and service providers, so that’s very rewarding as well.
Michelle Maldonado – Incredible insights that you must possess and that Amazon sellers and other e-commerce sellers could truly benefit from. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the virtual summit, what’s going to be covered, who’s going to be attending, what are the highlights?
Meghla Bhardwaj – Yes. The summit is going to be held November 10th – 12th and it’s a live summit. This is what differentiates it from all of the other e-commerce conferences that are mostly prerecorded. This is a truly live conference where all of the sessions will be held live. There are a lot of interactive, engaging presentations, masterclasses, workshops, where people can actually talk to the speakers and get information or get answers to their specific questions. We’re also going to be covering a wide range of topics ranging from what to expect in 2021, how e-commerce and retail is changing and how you need to adapt your business to be able to basically go into 2021 with confidence. And we’re also going to be talking about expanding beyond Amazon, because there’s so many other marketplaces that are emerging and new channels that people are buying on. For example, there’s social media and Instagram and Facebook, so we’re going to be covering a lot of those new emerging channels and telling people how they can sell on those channels. Then a highlight of the summit is a six hour China sourcing workshop that has never been done before at any other conference. And so this is a live six hour workshop that’s conducted by Steven Selikoff, who’s been sourcing products since 2005. He’s really experienced. And he’s going to talk to people about how to source effectively, how to negotiate, how to get your prices right, about shipping, so a lot of different topics, and he’s just going to go deep into sourcing and give people very advanced strategies of how to source profitably.
Michelle Maldonado – That’s incredible. And one of the things that you mentioned in terms of looking ahead to 2021, with 2020 being such an unusual year and a year that’s really shaken pretty much all industries, particularly e-commerce, this is very timely. This sounds to me like a must for all sorts of e-commerce sellers.
Meghla Bhardwaj – Absolutely. I totally agree. We’ve got over 25 speakers, including CJ Rosenbaum, of course. He’s presenting twice at the summit.