Chapter 7: Where the Boita Could Sail

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In January 2025, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stood at the 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Bhubaneswar and declared: “The Look East policy has its historical roots in this state. The Bali Yatra, which linked India to South East Asia, actually originated in Odisha.” The audience applauded. Delegates from seventy-five countries heard it. Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam had visited the state days earlier to explore economic opportunities.

This was the most prominent acknowledgment of Odisha’s eastern vocation by a senior Indian official in modern history. It happened in the same month that Indonesia became the first partner nation at Bali Yatra, and weeks after ambassadors from fourteen countries attended the festival at Cuttack. The narrative was being assembled, piece by piece, into something that looked like strategic intent.

But narrative is not strategy. And the question that matters is not whether Odisha has a story to tell Southeast Asia. It does — the previous six chapters have established that. The question is whether Odisha has anything to sell. Specifically: what do Southeast Asian markets actually buy from India, and where does Odisha fit in that demand?

This chapter is about the demand side. Not what Odisha wants to export, but what Southeast Asian countries want to import. The difference between those two framings is the difference between a trade strategy and a wishlist.

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What the Market Actually Buys

Start with the numbers. India-ASEAN bilateral trade reached USD 123 billion in 2024-25. ASEAN contributes roughly eleven percent of India’s global trade. That is a large market, growing at a reasonable clip, and it is also a market where India runs a significant trade deficit — USD 44 billion with ASEAN in 2023. India’s imports from ASEAN tripled since the ASEAN-India Free Trade Area came into effect in 2010, while its exports only doubled. The trade relationship is real, but the balance is tilted against India.

Now look at what individual countries are actually buying from India. This is where the abstraction meets the invoice.

Indonesia is India’s largest ASEAN trade partner. Total bilateral trade: USD 28.16 billion in FY 2024-25. India exports USD 5.38 billion. The main items: engineering goods (USD 1.94 billion), petroleum products (USD 692 million), organic and inorganic chemicals (USD 512 million), oilseeds (USD 299 million). Growth areas include pharmaceuticals, automotive components, IT, and biotechnology.

Vietnam hit a record USD 16.46 billion in bilateral trade in 2025, up 10.5 percent year-on-year. India exports roughly USD 6.1 billion. The top items: engineering goods (approximately USD 1.3 billion), frozen buffalo meat (over USD 700 million), rice (about 200,000 metric tonnes in late 2024-early 2025), iron and steel (approximately USD 350 million), pharmaceuticals, textile materials, and auto spare parts.

Thailand: bilateral trade of USD 19.07 billion in FY 2024-25, with India exporting USD 4.18 billion. The key items: machinery, precious stones, vehicles, fish and crustaceans, organic chemicals, aluminum articles, pharmaceuticals.

Myanmar: the smallest but geographically closest. Bilateral trade of USD 2.15 billion, up 23.56 percent year-on-year. India exports USD 614 million, and the single largest category is pharmaceuticals — USD 183.73 million, a full thirty percent of India’s exports to Myanmar. Then petroleum products, electrical appliances, construction materials.

This is the demand map. Engineering goods, petroleum products, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum, seafood, rice. These are the things that move in volume across the Bay of Bengal today. Not handicrafts, not cultural exports, not tourism — those are real opportunities, as we will see, but they operate at a different scale. The bulk of India-ASEAN trade is industrial goods. The question for Odisha is whether it has, or is building, the industrial capacity to serve these specific demand categories.

The answer, for the first time in Odisha’s modern history, is beginning to be yes. But “beginning to be” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

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The Sixty-One-Thousand-Crore Bet

If you had to pick a single number that defines Odisha’s potential as an exporter to Southeast Asia, it would be Rs 61,077 crore. That is the value of the MoU signed on April 8, 2025, between Indian Oil Corporation Limited and the Government of Odisha for a petrochemical complex at Paradip — IndianOil’s largest-ever single-location investment.

The complex will add a 1.5 million tonnes per annum dual-feed naphtha cracker to the existing Paradip refinery (which already processes 15 million tonnes per annum). The refinery’s capacity will expand to 25 MTPA. The products: polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), phenol, isopropyl alcohol, butadiene. These are the polymers and specialty chemicals that India currently imports in enormous quantities — the complex is expected to substitute Rs 30,000 crore in annual imports. It will generate Rs 8,500 crore annually for Odisha’s exchequer and create an estimated one lakh jobs, direct and indirect. Completion target: four to five years, putting operations at approximately 2029-2030.

Why does this matter for Southeast Asia? Because Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand are all significant importers of polymers and petrochemicals. These are the feedstocks of manufacturing — the plastics, the packaging materials, the synthetic fibers that downstream industries consume. The existing Paradip refinery already exports petroleum products, and IOCL itself describes the refinery as “strategically located for export of petroleum products to South-East Asian countries.” Once the petrochemical complex is operational, the same port that currently ships petroleum products will ship polymers — higher up the value chain, with better margins, directly into ASEAN demand.

This is not a cultural narrative. It is not a heritage project. It is heavy industry at scale, and it is the single largest value-addition opportunity Odisha has in Southeast Asian trade. The Rs 30,000 crore in annual import substitution tells you the domestic demand. The Paradip port location, directly facing the Bay of Bengal, tells you the export potential. Every Southeast Asian country that currently buys polymers from Saudi Arabia, South Korea, or Singapore’s refining complex would have a new, closer option.

The uncertainty is execution. Megaprojects in India have a well-documented tendency to slip — the original Paradip refinery was commissioned in 2016 after years of delays. The 2029-2030 timeline may stretch. Environmental clearances, land acquisition, construction bottlenecks — any of these could push the date. But the structural opportunity is clear. Paradip’s petrochemical complex, when it arrives, changes Odisha’s trade profile with Southeast Asia from raw-material exporter to industrial-goods exporter. That is a phase transition, not an incremental improvement.

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Pharmaceuticals: The Geographic Advantage Nobody Has Noticed

Myanmar imports USD 183.73 million in pharmaceuticals from India every year. It is the single largest category of Indian exports to Myanmar. Think about that for a moment. A country that shares a border with China, that could source generic medicines from any number of countries, buys more pharmaceuticals from India than any other product category. This is because Indian generics are among the world’s most cost-competitive, and Myanmar’s healthcare system depends on them.

Now consider where most of India’s pharmaceutical manufacturing is located: Hyderabad (Telangana), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Baddi (Himachal Pradesh), Goa, Pune (Maharashtra). These are all in western or southern India. A shipment of pharmaceuticals from Hyderabad to Myanmar travels by road to a port, then crosses the Bay of Bengal — or, more often, goes overland through northeast India via routes that are logistically difficult and bureaucratically encumbered. The geographic logic is simple: a pharmaceutical manufacturing cluster on the Odisha coast would be closer to the Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, and wider Bay of Bengal markets than any existing Indian pharma hub.

Odisha’s Pharma and Medical Devices Policy 2025, launched at the Odisha Pharma Summit in December 2025, targets Rs 25,000 crore in investment and one lakh jobs by 2030. In its first outing, the policy attracted Rs 7,043 crore in committed investment through forty-five MoUs. The signatory companies are not minor players: Hetero (India’s largest anti-retroviral drug maker), Aurobindo Pharma, Cipla, Macleods, Biological E. (vaccine manufacturer), and Granules Lifesciences. Infrastructure is being developed in two industrial clusters in Khordha district — a Pharmaceutical Park for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and formulations, and a Medical Devices Park with GMP-ready infrastructure. Both span over two hundred acres.

The cautious assessment: pharmaceutical manufacturing takes time to build. You do not go from signing MoUs to shipping product in a year. Regulatory approvals (WHO prequalification, country-specific registrations in Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia), supply chain establishment, talent recruitment — these are multi-year processes. The realistic timeline for Odisha-manufactured generics reaching Bay of Bengal markets is five to seven years, not two to three.

The honest assessment of the competitive advantage: it is real. Odisha has port access (Paradip, Dhamra), lower land costs than western Indian pharma clusters, an emerging industrial ecosystem, and a policy framework offering incentives. The Bay of Bengal pharma market is growing — Myanmar’s civil conflict has disrupted some supply chains, but the underlying demand for affordable generics is structural and increasing. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are all growing pharmaceutical markets. If Odisha can establish manufacturing at scale, the geographic proximity advantage over Hyderabad or Ahmedabad is genuine.

The risk is execution and credibility. Pharmaceutical manufacturing requires quality infrastructure — reliable power, clean water, temperature-controlled logistics. Odisha’s industrial infrastructure has improved significantly but is not yet at the level of Gujarat or Hyderabad. The first wave of companies to set up production will set the quality benchmark. If they deliver, others follow. If they struggle with infrastructure, the investment momentum stalls.

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Marine Products: The Existing Trade That Could Scale

Unlike petrochemicals (which are a future bet) or pharmaceuticals (which are an emerging play), marine product exports are an existing, revenue-generating business. Odisha exported 91,930 metric tonnes of marine products in FY 2024-25, generating Rs 4,708 crore (approximately USD 560 million) in annual revenue. The products: shrimp, fish, squid, cuttlefish. The markets: the United States, China, Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

The infrastructure exists. A 152-acre Mega Seafood Park provides cold storage, processing, and packaging facilities. Export routes run through Paradip Port, Kolkata and Visakhapatnam ports, and Biju Patnaik International Airport for air cargo. Odisha is among India’s top seafood-producing and exporting states, alongside Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat.

The Southeast Asian dimension is more complicated than it appears. Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia are themselves major seafood producers and exporters. Vietnam’s shrimp industry alone exceeds USD 10 billion. Odisha is not going to out-compete Vietnam on shrimp volume or price. The opportunity is more specific: value-added processed products (ready-to-cook, marinated, breaded shrimp and fish preparations), specialty seafood products that serve niche demand segments, and — here is the less obvious angle — aquaculture technology.

Bariflo Cybernetics, a Bhubaneswar-based startup, develops real-time monitoring and AI-driven optimization systems for aquaculture. This is the kind of technology that has natural Southeast Asian relevance. Vietnam’s aquaculture industry is massive and increasingly technology-hungry. Thailand is a global leader in commercial shrimp farming. Indonesian aquaculture is growing rapidly. A company that can demonstrate effective aquaculture AI in Odisha’s conditions has a product that travels well across the Bay of Bengal — the farming conditions, the species, the challenges (disease management, feed optimization, water quality) are similar.

The scale difference matters here. Marine products at Rs 4,708 crore annually are significant but not transformative for a state economy. The aquaculture technology angle is small in revenue terms but interesting in strategic terms — it is a knowledge export, not a commodity export, and it builds the kind of bilateral relationships that commodity trade does not.

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The Buddhist Circuit: A Door That Has Not Been Opened

Odisha received 53,392 foreign tourists in all of 2024. The top source countries: Japan (4,423), Italy (3,830), Germany (3,722), the United Kingdom (3,715), France (3,008). Notice what is missing from that list. Not a single Southeast Asian country appears among Odisha’s top foreign tourist sources.

Meanwhile, Bihar’s Bodh Gaya alone drew 250,000 foreign visitors in 2024. Uttar Pradesh’s Buddhist circuit — Sarnath, Kushinagar, and associated sites — attracted 61 lakh visitors in the first nine months of 2025, of which 2.72 lakh were international tourists. The foreign Buddhist pilgrims go to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They come from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, Myanmar, and Vietnam. They visit Bodh Gaya where the Buddha was enlightened, Sarnath where he gave his first sermon, Kushinagar where he died.

They do not visit Odisha. They do not visit the Diamond Triangle — Ratnagiri, Lalitgiri, and Udayagiri — despite these sites being among the most significant Buddhist archaeological complexes in India. Ratnagiri was a major Vajrayana center that housed five hundred monastics and participated in exchange networks stretching from Tibet to Indonesia. Lalitgiri yielded a casket containing what may be a bone relic of the Buddha himself. Udayagiri is the largest Buddhist site in the triangle. All three are on UNESCO’s tentative list for World Heritage status. All three are within ninety kilometers of Bhubaneswar. And all three are essentially unknown to the average Southeast Asian Buddhist pilgrim.

Why? The answer is not complicated. It is infrastructure, marketing, and connectivity.

Infrastructure: the Diamond Triangle sites have basic ASI protection but lack hotels, restaurants, multilingual guides, foreign-language signage, and transport connections. Compare this to Bodh Gaya, which has Thai, Japanese, and Burmese monasteries and cultural centers — purpose-built facilities funded by Southeast Asian Buddhist organizations. Bodh Gaya’s infrastructure was built partly by the visitors themselves, creating a self-reinforcing cycle: Southeast Asian Buddhists visit, they build monasteries, the monasteries attract more visitors. Odisha’s Buddhist sites have no equivalent.

Marketing: there is no Buddhist tourism circuit marketing campaign targeting Thai, Myanmar, Vietnamese, or Japanese travel agencies. No familiarization trips for Southeast Asian tour operators. No partnerships with the Southeast Asian Buddhist organizations that fund pilgrimage tours. Bihar did this work. Uttar Pradesh did this work. Odisha did not.

Connectivity: the Bhubaneswar-Singapore IndiGo flight, inaugurated in 2025, operates thrice weekly — but with below-breakeven load factors, subsidized by the Odisha state government to the tune of approximately Rs 27 crore through March 2026. There is no direct flight to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hanoi, or Ho Chi Minh City. A Thai Buddhist who wants to visit the Diamond Triangle must fly to Delhi or Kolkata, then connect to Bhubaneswar, then arrange ground transport to the sites. Most will simply not bother when Bodh Gaya is more accessible.

The government has begun to move. An MoU was signed between Odisha’s Odia Language, Literature and Culture Department and the Light of Buddhadharma Foundation International for annual prayer ceremonies at the Diamond Triangle sites, enhanced visitor facilities, and digital engagement. The Odisha Tourism Amendment Policy-2026 focuses on Buddhist circuit development. In January 2025, the second Prayer Ceremony for Guru Padmasambhava and International Buddhist Conference was held at Udayagiri, drawing 1,700 monks, scholars, and devotees from across India and several foreign countries.

These are starts. The arithmetic is suggestive: if even five percent of the 3.5 lakh foreign Buddhist tourists who visit Bihar and UP annually could be directed to Odisha as part of an extended circuit, that would represent approximately 17,500 additional visitors — a thirty-three percent increase in Odisha’s entire foreign tourist count. The Dhauli Peace Pagoda, built in 1972 through Indo-Japanese collaboration, gives a ready-made narrative for Japanese pilgrims. The Vajrayana connection between Ratnagiri and Indonesia gives one for Indonesian Buddhists. The raw material is there. What is missing is the institutional machinery to convert historical significance into tourist footfall.

I should be honest about the limits. Buddhist tourism, even if successfully developed, will not transform Odisha’s economy. The revenue from 17,500 additional foreign tourists, spending perhaps USD 100-200 per day for a three-to-four-day visit, amounts to roughly USD 5-15 million annually. That is meaningful for local communities around the Diamond Triangle but negligible at the state level. The real value of Buddhist tourism is strategic, not economic — it builds people-to-people connections, creates a reason for Southeast Asian visitors to come to Odisha, and establishes the state in the consciousness of a market that currently does not think about it at all.

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The Ikat Bridge: Shared Heritage as Commercial Narrative

The word “ikat” is Indonesian. It means “to bind or knot.” The technique — resist-dyeing threads before weaving them — exists in India, Indonesia, Japan, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In India, the center of ikat weaving is western Odisha: the Sambalpur region, where the technique is called bandha, and the weavers are Bhuliya communities working along the Mahanadi river basin.

In Indonesia, ikat is practiced throughout the archipelago, from Sumba to Flores to Timor to Bali. The motifs differ — Sambalpuri features geometric patterns with shankha (conch shell) and chakra (wheel) designs; Indonesian ikat from Sumba features horses, crocodiles, and ancestral figures — but the fundamental technique is the same. Both traditions resist-dye the threads before putting them on the loom, creating patterns that emerge in the weaving rather than being printed or embroidered afterward.

Whether this shared technique reflects direct transmission through maritime trade or independent parallel development is unresolved. What is not in dispute is that the narrative of shared heritage is commercially actionable. Two nations, separated by an ocean, independently maintaining the same textile technique for centuries — this is the kind of story that sells in luxury markets, that curators build exhibitions around, and that cultural institutions fund.

The Sambalpuri saree has GI (Geographical Indication) protection, registered in July 2012. Odisha has eighteen GI-tagged products in total, more than most Indian states. But the export reality is sobering: textiles account for 0.6 percent of Odisha’s Rs 90,000 crore merchandise exports. That is approximately Rs 540 crore — and this figure likely includes industrial textiles, not just handloom. Handicraft-specific export data for Odisha is not separately available in public sources, which itself tells you something about the scale.

The opportunity is not volume. Odisha’s handloom sector will not compete with industrial textile exporters. The opportunity is positioning. A joint Sambalpuri-Indonesian ikat exhibition at Singapore Art Week or the Jakarta Art Fair costs perhaps Rs 50 lakh and positions Sambalpuri textiles in the cultural consciousness of a market that already values ikat. Japanese-Indian indigo-dyeing collaborations have received international art-world attention as a precedent. The “shared heritage” narrative is stronger than any single product.

The practical barriers are distribution and design. No SE Asian-focused distribution channel exists for Odisha handicrafts. The existing e-commerce platforms — Amazon, Flipkart Samarth, TRIFED, GoCoop, Utkalamrita — serve domestic and Western markets. No gallery in Singapore, Bangkok, or Bali stocks Sambalpuri textiles. No Odisha design studio is producing Sambalpuri-inspired products adapted to Southeast Asian home decor or fashion markets. The product exists. The narrative exists. The channel does not.

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Kandhamal Turmeric: The Premium Organic Play

Here is a product that almost sells itself, if anyone knew about it.

Kandhamal turmeric, grown by tribal farmers in Kandhamal district, received its GI tag on April 1, 2019. It is completely organic — the farmers do not use synthetic inputs, not out of marketing strategy but out of traditional practice. It has higher curcumin content than standard varieties, which is the key selling point for the global nutraceutical and health-food market, where curcumin is the active compound that commands premium pricing.

The numbers: approximately 13,600 hectares under cultivation, 24,000 metric tonnes annual production, 1,400-1,500 metric tonnes exported to Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and Korea. The global turmeric finger market was valued at USD 260 million in 2023, projected to reach USD 450 million by 2032. India established a National Turmeric Board in January 2025, targeting USD 1 billion in turmeric exports by 2030, up from USD 212.65 million in 2023-24.

The Southeast Asian angle is specific. Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam all use turmeric in cooking and traditional medicine. Singapore and urban centers in Thailand and Indonesia have growing health-food markets that pay premiums for organic, high-curcumin, GI-tagged products — exactly what Kandhamal turmeric is. The product requires organic certification for target markets (which it effectively already meets), a distribution partnership, and branded packaging that communicates the origin story. The tribal farming heritage, the organic practices, the higher curcumin content — these are not marketing inventions. They are facts about the product. The challenge is getting the product onto shelves in Singapore health-food stores, into Thai wellness supply chains, into Indonesian jamu (traditional herbal medicine) networks.

The scale is modest. Even tripling Kandhamal turmeric’s current export volume would add perhaps USD 5-10 million in annual revenue. This is not a macroeconomic play. It is a microeconomic one — meaningful for the tribal farming communities in Kandhamal, important as a proof of concept for premium agricultural exports, and useful as a brand-building exercise. Every premium product that carries an Odisha origin story into a Southeast Asian market makes the next product easier to introduce.

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Silver Filigree and Pattachitra: Craft at the Boundary

Cuttack’s silver filigree — tarakasi, literally “wire of silver” — is a five-hundred-year-old tradition. Over a hundred families in Cuttack still practice it. The products range from jewelry (earrings, chandbalis, jhumkas, pendants, bangles) to idols and decorative objects. An alloy of ninety percent or higher pure silver is beaten and drawn into fine wire strands, then soldered into intricate designs. It already exports to Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

The Southeast Asian luxury market is a natural fit. Singapore and Bangkok have sophisticated luxury jewelry markets that value handcrafted, heritage-backed pieces. Silver filigree’s price point — lower than gold fine jewelry but higher than costume jewelry — fits the “affordable luxury” segment that has grown across urban Southeast Asia. The Cuttack filigree tradition has enough depth and documentation to support the kind of provenance story that luxury markets demand.

Pattachitra — the scroll painting tradition of Raghurajpur village in Puri district — is a different kind of opportunity. Raghurajpur has over 120 households, most decorated with mural paintings, and holds heritage village designation from INTACH. The products have diversified from traditional mythological scrolls to wall hangings, bookmarks, greeting cards, home decor, and wearable art. The alignment with Balinese and Javanese painting traditions — both feature mythological narrative painting — creates a natural curatorial connection.

For both crafts, the barrier is the same: no Southeast Asian distribution channel exists. No gallery representation in Singapore, Bangkok, or Bali. No participation in Southeast Asian art fairs or design exhibitions. The existing export routes go to domestic markets and Western buyers. E-commerce platforms like Amazon India reported over Rs 1 crore in sales for Odisha Handloom and 500-plus products online, but this serves a primarily Indian market.

The intervention required is specific and not expensive: two to three gallery partnerships in Bali’s Ubud art market (which already absorbs Indian-origin craft), a presence at Singapore Art Week, and a dedicated export-quality product line designed for Southeast Asian home decor sensibilities. Bali’s art market operates on consignment and personal relationships — a single productive visit by a well-connected intermediary could establish a channel that did not exist before.

I want to be clear about scale. The global handicraft export market from India is approximately Rs 33,000 crore (USD 3.72 billion) annually. Odisha’s share is not separately tracked but is likely small. Even successful Southeast Asian market entry for silver filigree and Pattachitra would generate revenues in the single-digit crore range. The value is not in volume. It is in establishing Odisha as a source of distinctive, heritage-backed products in a market that currently does not think about the state at all. In marketing terms, this is a beachhead strategy — not the main invasion force, but the first unit on the shore.

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Cashew: The Opportunity That Is Not One

Odisha has India’s largest area under cashew cultivation: 2.23 lakh hectares, roughly sixteen percent of India’s total raw cashew nut production. The state grows more cashew than anyone in the country.

But growing is not processing. Kerala dominates cashew processing with a twenty percent share, followed by Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Gujarat. Odisha has “emerging small-scale shelling units that leverage lower labor costs” — which is a polite way of saying the processing industry barely exists.

And here is the harder truth: even if Odisha scaled up processing, it would be competing with Vietnam — the world’s largest cashew processor. Vietnam processes cashew at industrial scale with cost structures that Indian processors struggle to match. The price competition is brutal.

Odisha’s cashew opportunity, if it exists, is in value-added products — flavored, roasted, organic-certified cashew that competes on quality and branding rather than price. But this is a niche within a niche, and the infrastructure for it (processing plants, organic certification, export packaging) does not exist. I include cashew here not because it is a strong play, but because it is frequently cited as one. Being honest about what is not realistic is as important as being enthusiastic about what is.

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Cuisine: The Parallel Nobody Has Commercialized

There is a quiet structural fact about Odia cuisine that anyone who has eaten both Thai and Odia food will recognize: they share a base grammar. Both are rice-centric. Both use coconut milk as a curry foundation. Both rely on seafood — prawns, fish, crab. Both use mustard and turmeric as foundational spices. Both have traditions of fermented fish and dried fish.

The specifics are striking. Pakhala — rice soaked in water with curd, fermented for eight to twelve hours, eaten cool — has direct parallels in Filipino balao-balao (fermented rice with shrimp) and burongisda (fermented rice with fish). Chungdi Malai, the creamy prawn curry made with coconut milk, is structurally similar to Thai and Indonesian coconut-milk prawn curries. The flavor profiles differ — Odia cuisine uses less chili and more mustard than Thai, less galangal and lemongrass — but the underlying logic of rice-plus-coconut-plus-seafood-plus-fermented-flavors is shared.

No international “Odia food” brand exists. There is no Odia restaurant in Singapore or Bangkok. There is no Odia cuisine entry in the consciousness of the global food market. Compare this to Kerala, whose cuisine has been successfully branded internationally through Ayurvedic tourism and the spice route narrative, or to the Thai and Vietnamese cuisines that have become global categories.

The commercialization opportunity is real but diffuse. It is not a single product to be exported — it is a cultural position to be established. An Odia restaurant in Singapore that explicitly draws the Kalinga-Southeast Asia connection. A food-focused cultural exchange program. A joint Odia-Thai cooking workshop built around the shared rice-coconut-seafood grammar. These are small initiatives. But they contribute to the same objective as the Buddhist tourism circuit, the ikat exhibitions, and the silver filigree gallery placements: making Odisha visible to a market that currently does not see it.

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The Industrial Backbone: Steel and Aluminum

This chapter has moved through cultural products and agricultural specialties and may risk suggesting that Odisha’s Southeast Asian opportunity is primarily about handicrafts and turmeric. It is not. The largest near-term trade values will come from industrial goods, and Odisha has an industrial base that is uniquely positioned.

Kalinganagar in Jajpur district hosts Tata Steel, Jindal Stainless (2.2 MTPA capacity, India’s first green hydrogen plant in the stainless steel sector), JSPL, JSW, and AM/NS. The Stainless Steel Industrial Park at Kalinganagar and the Downstream Steel Park at Angul are developing ecosystems for value-added steel products. Indonesia alone imported USD 1.94 billion in engineering goods from India in FY 2024-25. Vietnam imported approximately USD 1.3 billion. A meaningful share of India’s engineering goods exports to ASEAN already originates from production in or near Odisha’s industrial belt.

Aluminum is a similar story. NALCO, headquartered in Bhubaneswar, operates the full value chain from bauxite mining (68.25 lakh TPA) through alumina refining (21 lakh TPA at Damanjodi) to aluminum smelting (4.60 lakh TPA at Angul). Odisha contributes over fifty percent of India’s aluminum production. Vedanta and Hindalco also operate in the state. The Downstream Aluminum Park at Angul is designed to move Odisha from exporting alumina and ingots to exporting aluminum profiles, rolled products, foils, and auto components.

The demand is clear: Southeast Asian automotive and construction sectors need aluminum and steel products. Thailand imported fish, crustaceans, organic chemicals, and aluminum articles from India in FY 2024-25. Vietnam’s construction and manufacturing sectors consume significant steel volumes. The current export flow from Odisha’s industrial belt already serves some of this demand, primarily through Paradip Port.

The constraint is the same one that has defined Odisha’s economy for decades: the downstream. Odisha produces steel. The downstream products — auto components, stainless steel kitchenware, industrial fasteners, aluminum profiles for construction — are more often manufactured in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, or Maharashtra using Odisha’s raw and semi-processed materials. The industrial parks at Kalinganagar and Angul are designed to break this pattern, but the downstream ecosystem takes time to develop. Five to ten years is the honest timeline for a mature downstream manufacturing cluster that can compete in export markets.

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Paradip: Bulk Carrier or Bay of Bengal Hub?

All of these trade opportunities — petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, marine products, steel, aluminum — depend on getting goods across the water. And here is where a critical infrastructure gap becomes visible.

Paradip Port is India’s largest cargo-handling port: 150.41 million tonnes in FY 2024-25, ranked number one nationally. It handles iron ore, coal, crude oil, and petroleum products. It has deep-draft capacity and a strategic position facing Southeast Asian shipping routes. The Dhamra port (Adani-operated, 46.08 MTPA, expandable to 80 MTPA) adds additional capacity. Gopalpur (6 MTPA, expandable to 20 MTPA) provides an all-weather alternative.

But here is the gap: Paradip excels at bulk cargo. Container shipping — the mode that carries high-value finished goods, processed foods, pharmaceuticals, handicrafts — is weak. Container traffic from Odisha typically routes through feeder services to hub ports like Colombo or Singapore, rather than sailing direct. Chennai port, by contrast, has a strong container ecosystem and established RORO (Roll-on/Roll-off) services for automobile exports to ASEAN. The auto-export corridor from Chennai to Southeast Asia is a proven model that Paradip lacks.

For bulk commodities — iron ore, petroleum products, eventually petrochemicals — Paradip’s existing infrastructure works. For the high-value goods that this chapter is about, the container logistics gap is a real barrier. Getting a container of silver filigree or Kandhamal turmeric from Odisha to Singapore currently means routing through another port. That adds cost and time, which erode the competitiveness of products that are already competing against established suppliers.

The state government has ambitious port plans: Rs 50,000 crore in maritime MoUs signed at India Maritime Week 2025, a new port at Bahuda Muhana (Rs 21,500 crore), a shipbuilding cluster at Kendrapara (Rs 22,700 crore), a target of 500 million tonnes annually by 2047. These are real investments. But developing container terminal infrastructure and cold chain logistics at Paradip or Dhamra is a decade-long project, and until it is done, Odisha’s high-value exports face a logistics disadvantage compared to states with established container ecosystems.

Air connectivity tells a similar story. Bhubaneswar has direct flights to Singapore (thrice weekly, IndiGo) and Dubai and Abu Dhabi. A Bangkok route is planned but not yet operational. The Singapore flight is critical — it is Odisha’s only direct SE Asian air link — but it operates at below-breakeven load factors and survives on state subsidy. If the subsidy ends and loads do not improve, the link disappears. Every trade and tourism opportunity described in this chapter becomes harder without that flight.

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What Other States Did Right

The comparison is uncomfortable but necessary.

Tamil Nadu leveraged two assets: a large Tamil diaspora in Singapore and Malaysia (Tamils constitute about five percent of Singapore’s population, and Tamil is one of the city-state’s four official languages), and an auto industry cluster around Chennai. The diaspora provided living institutional connections — cultural, commercial, political. The auto industry provided the export volumes. Chennai port’s RORO services ship Hyundai, Renault-Nissan, and other manufacturers’ vehicles to ASEAN markets. The result: Tamil Nadu has a functioning, revenue-generating, institutionally embedded trade relationship with Southeast Asia. It was not built on narrative. It was built on vehicles rolling onto ships.

Karnataka leveraged IT. Bangalore’s technology ecosystem serves Southeast Asian clients through companies like Infosys and Wipro, which have SE Asian operations. The startup ecosystem has direct fintech and edutech relevance to ASEAN markets. Again, the asset was a globally competitive industry cluster, not a historical narrative.

Kerala leveraged a tourism brand. “God’s Own Country” is recognized across Southeast Asia. Ayurveda was positioned as a cultural export. The spice route heritage — Kerala is now pursuing UNESCO World Heritage listing for the historic spice trade routes — was converted into a modern economic identity. Kerala’s model is the closest parallel to what Odisha could do: build the brand first, let trade follow.

Gujarat leveraged merchant networks and chemicals-pharmaceuticals infrastructure. The Gujarati business diaspora in Southeast Asia is living and active. Diamond and jewelry exports to ASEAN flow through established channels. The port infrastructure at Mundra and Kandla was developed for container shipping from the start.

The pattern across all four cases: each state had either a living diaspora (Tamil Nadu, Gujarat), a globally competitive industry cluster (Karnataka, Gujarat), or a powerful brand narrative (Kerala) — or a combination. Odisha has the raw material for a brand narrative — the Kalinga maritime heritage is genuine and historically deep — but has not invested in building it. It has no Odia diaspora in any Southeast Asian country. Its industry clusters are significant (steel, aluminum, petrochemicals) but oriented toward domestic and raw-material export markets rather than Southeast Asian finished-goods trade.

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The Air That Connects

There is a detail in the air connectivity picture that deserves separate attention because it illustrates the gap between intention and execution.

The Odisha state cabinet earmarked approximately Rs 27 crore to subsidize the Bhubaneswar-Dubai and Bhubaneswar-Singapore routes through March 2026. The routes exist because the state pays to keep them alive. Load factors are below the breakeven point where an airline would operate them commercially. The state is, in effect, paying for the connectivity that it hopes will generate enough demand to eventually sustain itself.

This is not inherently irrational. Connectivity is a chicken-and-egg problem: tourists and business travelers will not come to Odisha without flights, but airlines will not fly without passengers. Someone has to go first. The state’s subsidy is a bet that if the flight exists, the demand will build.

But the bet has a timeline. Rs 27 crore is the budget through March 2026. If by then the load factors have not improved — if Buddhist pilgrims from Thailand have not started arriving, if business travelers to Singapore have not discovered the direct route, if the aquaculture tech startups and pharmaceutical exporters have not started using it — the subsidy will be difficult to justify politically. And if the Singapore flight disappears, Odisha loses its only direct SE Asian air link. The Buddhist circuit marketing, the handicraft exhibitions, the trade delegations — all of these become materially harder to execute.

This is where the various threads of this chapter converge. The Singapore flight needs Buddhist tourists to fill seats. The Buddhist tourism circuit needs marketing campaigns to attract pilgrims. The marketing campaigns need institutional partnerships with Southeast Asian travel agencies. The institutional partnerships need someone in Singapore or Bangkok doing the work. Odisha has no state trade or tourism office in any ASEAN country. No permanent representative. No one on the ground.

Compare this to the presence that other Indian states and Indian institutions maintain in ASEAN capitals. It is the absence of institutional infrastructure for Southeast Asian engagement — not the absence of products, heritage, or opportunities — that is the binding constraint.

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What the Numbers Say

Let me try to size the realistic opportunity, sector by sector, with an honest assessment of confidence levels.

Petrochemicals (Rs 61,077 crore Paradip complex): If the complex is operational by 2030, petrochemical and polymer exports to ASEAN could reach USD 500 million to USD 1 billion annually within five years of commissioning. This depends on the complex being built on time, global petrochemical demand holding, and Paradip’s port logistics being adequate. Confidence: moderate. The capital is committed and the site is under development, but megaproject delays are common and global petrochemical markets are cyclical.

Pharmaceuticals: If the Khordha pharmaceutical parks reach significant production by 2028-2030, exports to Bay of Bengal markets (Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam) could reach USD 50-100 million annually. This would represent a small share of India’s total pharma exports to ASEAN but would be new economic activity for Odisha. Confidence: moderate-to-low. The policy and MoUs are in place, but manufacturing setup and regulatory approvals take time.

Marine products: Scaling from Rs 4,708 crore to Rs 6,000-7,000 crore within five years through increased SE Asian market share and value-added processing is achievable. This requires cold chain improvements and targeted marketing of processed products. Confidence: moderate-to-high. The base is already established.

Buddhist tourism: Adding 15,000-25,000 foreign tourists annually within five years if serious marketing and infrastructure investment occurs. Revenue impact: USD 5-15 million annually. Confidence: moderate. The sites exist, the narrative is strong, but the infrastructure and marketing gaps are real.

Handicrafts and cultural exports (ikat, silver filigree, Pattachitra): Revenue of Rs 10-50 crore annually in SE Asian markets within five years. This is a beachhead, not a revenue driver. Confidence: moderate. The products are real, the narrative is genuine, but the distribution channels need to be built from scratch.

Kandhamal turmeric: USD 5-10 million in premium SE Asian market exports within three to five years. Confidence: moderate-to-high. The product is already GI-tagged, organic, and exported. Expanding to Singapore and Thailand health-food markets requires distribution partnerships, not product development.

Downstream steel and aluminum: Significant export volumes (USD 200-500 million) to ASEAN are possible within ten years as the Kalinganagar and Angul downstream parks mature. Confidence: low-to-moderate. This depends on the downstream ecosystem developing, which is not guaranteed.

The total realistic opportunity, taking everything together and applying appropriate discounts for execution risk, delay, and competition, is probably in the range of USD 1-2 billion annually by the early 2030s — dominated by petrochemicals if the Paradip complex delivers. Without the petrochemical complex, the figure drops to USD 200-400 million, which is meaningful but not transformative.

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The Card That Has Not Been Played

I want to close with an observation that is less about economics and more about positioning.

Every opportunity described in this chapter — petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, marine products, tourism, handicrafts, turmeric — could originate from any Indian coastal state. If you listed the products without naming the state, there would be nothing distinctively Odia about most of them. Other states make steel. Other states process shrimp. Other states are developing pharmaceutical clusters. Other states have Buddhist sites. Other states grow turmeric.

What Odisha has that no other Indian state can claim is the Kalinga narrative.

The historical fact that the Kalinga coast was one of the primary nodes connecting India to Southeast Asia for a thousand years. The fact that the term “Keling” in Malay derives from Kalinga. The fact that the shadow puppet vocabulary in Indonesian Wayang traces to Odia Ravana Chhaya. The fact that the Tooth Relic in Kandy’s most sacred temple came from Kalingan Dantapura. The fact that Bali Yatra celebrates a maritime connection that is archaeologically documented at Manikapatna and textually attested by Ptolemy, Xuanzang, and the Periplus.

This is not a marketing gimmick. It is a historically grounded relationship that no other Indian state can claim at the same depth and specificity. Tamil Nadu has a living diaspora in Southeast Asia. Gujarat has active merchant networks. But Odisha has the origin story — the oldest, deepest, most archaeologically documented maritime connection between India and the world on the other side of the Bay of Bengal.

The Kalinga narrative is a bridge — not a bridge that carries cargo, but a bridge that carries meaning. In international trade, meaning matters. It is the difference between being a vendor and being a partner. It is the reason Japan invested in Thai automotive manufacturing rather than identical factories elsewhere — the relationship had depth. It is the reason Australian wine exporters to China spent decades building cultural associations before the tariffs hit. Economic relationships that have a cultural substrate are more resilient than those that exist purely on price.

Odisha has never played this card. It has preserved it — Bali Yatra continues, the Diamond Triangle sites are protected, the craft traditions survive — but it has never deployed it strategically. No “Kalinga Initiative” for Southeast Asian engagement. No institutional framework that uses the historical connection as a foundation for modern trade, tourism, and cultural exchange. The narrative sits in the ground at Manikapatna, in the puppet vocabulary of Wayang, in the ikat looms of Sambalpur, waiting for someone to pick it up and use it.

The sadhabas knew what they were doing when they loaded their boitas. They carried goods that their trading partners wanted. They understood the demand side. They built relationships that lasted centuries. The question for modern Odisha is not whether the boita could sail again — it is whether anyone has bothered to ask the people on the other shore what cargo they want it to carry, and whether Odisha has the institutional will to load the ship accordingly.

The goods exist. The demand exists. The narrative exists. What does not exist — not yet — is the strategy that connects them.