India has potential to match booming China business, FedEx says

FedEx Corp. says its business is expanding strongly across Asia and that India could eventually yield as much business for the world’s top air-express company as China already does.

“It’s not just China. You’ve got the whole of the region that’s growing in the strong double-digit range,” said David Cunningham, FedEx’s Asia-Pacific president.

The company, which vies against U.S. rival United Parcel Service Inc. and Deutsche Post AG’s DHL Express, has posted explosive growth in its China operations in recent years.

FedEx’s delivery volumes in the world’s most populous country surged more than 50 percent in the three months to the end of August.

Cunningham said that although India was likely to present the same opportunities for FedEx as China already has, “it is going to be a long time coming.”

India and China’s “economies are growing and maturing, but they are coming from two different ends of the spectrum,” he said.

While China is pursuing rapid market-based reforms and drawing billions of dollars in foreign direct investment, especially in manufacturing, the pace of economic change and investment is slower in India, where emerging strengths are concentrated in service businesses such as software development, call centers and back-office work.

But Cunningham said India was a focus market because it will probably have a larger population than China’s by 2020.

China, the world’s most populated country, has nearly 1.3 billion people, while India comes a close second with just over 1 billion. Over a third of the world’s population lives in these two countries alone.