Alexander Vedyakhin, Sber: 'Indian Exports To Russia Are Becoming Technological'

On the sidelines of the international industrial exhibition Innoprom in India, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank Alexander Vedyakhin spoke about how the structure of bilateral trade has changed dramatically over the past two years: instead of traditional tea, rice, and pharmaceuticals, Russian business is increasingly purchasing industrial equipment, auto components, and electronics. Alexander Vedyakhin also revealed details of the financial bridge between the countries, explained why 90% of payments now go through in 10 minutes, and assessed the potential of Indian exports to Russia.

Sber is now called the main financial bridge between Russia and India. What results have you achieved going into Innoprom, and what do you consider the main achievement over the past year?

Today, the question of how many days a payment between our countries will take has been removed from the agenda. We have built a stable transactional business, and Sber has become the main provider of payments between the countries.

The numbers speak for themselves. More than 90% of payments from Russia to India are now processed in less than 10 minutes. For comparison: a year ago this figure was 60%. And more than a third of all payments (almost 35%) go through within 60 seconds. This is the level of instant transfers, comparable to the best global practices. In addition, 40% of cross-border payments that Indian companies send to Russia take place entirely online, without manual involvement. We have automated monitoring of gold transactions, opening deposits and accounts for Indian companies - most operations now take place without human involvement.

Another achievement is consistency. We have created a full-fledged ecosystem in which participants in foreign economic activity can obtain everything they need: payments, bank guarantees, letters of credit, loans. And all of this in national currencies, without reliance on Western infrastructure.

The structure of trade between Russia and India is also changing today. Is this really noticeable? Can you give specific examples?

This is perhaps the most interesting change we are observing. If we look at the structure of Indian imports to Russia two years ago, the top 5 included traditional groups: pharmaceuticals, chemical products, food products: seafood, tea, rice, as well as ferrous metals - steel and aluminum. It was a classic trade format of developing economies.

Now the picture is changing dramatically. Supplies in mechanical engineering, electronics, industrial equipment, auto components, and batteries are growing dynamically. India is also increasing supplies of finished food products, beverages, cosmetics, textiles, and clothing. We are recording a clear transition from a raw-materials model to a technological one.

Let me give a concrete example: the share of electrical machines and industrial equipment in the import structure grew from 6.3% to 7.8% in just one financial year. At the same time, smartphone supplies from India to Russia and the CIS countries over the same period increased more than threefold, reaching 1.1 billion dollars. And this trend, apparently, is only gaining momentum.

The story with textiles is especially indicative. Previously, the basis of textile imports was cotton and home textiles. But today the real driver is technical textiles for industry and medicine. Its supplies to Russia grew by an impressive 82%, to 23.2 million dollars in 2025. At the same time, the total volume of the Russian market for technical fabrics is estimated at 3 billion dollars -- this means that we have enormous room for further growth.

What does this mean in practice? Russian business is beginning to perceive India not as a supplier of raw materials or consumer goods, but as a high-tech industrial partner. And this opens up completely new niches for Russian importers.

Sber actively helps businesses find each other. Tell us more about the Business Development service. How does it work and what results does it have?

We have created a service that selects Indian suppliers for specific requests from Russian businesses. We have formed a large database of Indian companies ready to work with the Russian market, and the partner search time for most categories is about two days.

The results are impressive: the total turnover of payments within this project for successful SME deals in the first 8 months of 2026 already exceeds turnover for all of 2025. And here too we see an industry redistribution. If earlier requests were concentrated around pharmaceuticals and food products, now Russian companies are actively looking for suppliers of industrial equipment, auto components, electronics, and chemical products.

We plan to further automate this process. For the most in-demand categories, responses to business requests will be generated almost in real time, including with the help of AI agents. This will allow us to scale the service and connect thousands of new companies to it.

At the same time, it is important to understand the scale of the potential. Today, several thousand Russian small and medium-sized enterprises make payments with India. But in India there are more than a million exporters, and only about 10 thousand work with Russia. India's unrealized export potential to Russia is estimated at 35.7 billion dollars according to Strategy Partners. This is a huge field for growth, and we are only at the beginning of the journey.

What is your forecast for 2027? What should we expect from the development of bilateral relations?

In 2027, we will actively develop payment services in India and introduce high-tech solutions based on artificial intelligence to automate processes. For our part, we will also continue working to help balance trade through the development of industrial exports from India.

The main thing we see is colossal unrealized potential. And Innoprom is the ideal platform to show it to businesses in both countries. We have brought here Sber's technological agenda - our AI solutions, digital platforms, and services. We believe that technology will become one of the focal areas in bilateral relations in the coming years.