Why is everything super overpriced in India?

[The_Prince2017]

Everything is damn super overpriced here. The GTX 1080 FE is for about $1100. Why? The 750 TI is for $150. The 950 is for $250. Why is this?

 

[minemarcius]

taxes , shipping, local retailers need to profit out of the product too so they will make the price a bit higher

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Indian companies have to pay high import duties - and remember India has to import everything to do with tech.

Also, unlike UK & USA, many Indians are too poor to buy a computer or PC parts so it's a vicious cycle. Indian companies only place relatively small orders for parts & that means a lot less discount from the suppliers.

When the Indian government gets it's priorities right and starts to improve the living standards of millions of it's people, then more computers will be bought, more components will be bought, and slowly prices will come down.

 

[Solandri]

Another problem is that the Rupee is not a major currency. At the currency exchange markets, this makes only a percent or two difference (e.g. someone wishing to convert from INR to CAD must actually convert INR to USD to CAD, or INR to EUR to CAD, paying 2x the currency exchange fees). But it makes a huge difference for how companies do their accounting.

Since currency exchange rates are constantly changing, a company has to pick a currency to operate in. For most countries, this is USD, EUR, or JPY. But it's hard to make financial plans if the 1 billion INR revenue you make in 1Q2016 is worth a different amount than the 1 billion INR revenue you make in 2Q2016. So companies strike a deal with a currency broker. The broker will give them the same exchange rate for the entire year (or several years).

But in return, the broker charge a higher fee. And in the case of currencies like the INR which has lost about a third of its value against the USD in the last 5 years:
https://www.google.com/search?q=inr+usd&oq=inr+usd

they will protect themselves by offering a really poor exchange rate. That way if the currency drops another 20% in the next year, they don't end up losing money. The manufacturer doesn't really care since they're not the one paying (the customer is). They adjust their pricing according to this skewed exchange rate, resulting in really high prices. Same thing happened to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (though in some cases their currency went up - it's the volatility which hurts, not necessarily the currency's value).

This is why you can often get a better price by converting your money to USD or EUR, buying abroad, and having it shipped overseas and paying import duties. If the shipping cost is less than how much the currency exchange service fears the INR could drop this year, then it's cheaper than buying domestically. (This is also why it was really important for Europe to switch from dozens of different currencies to the Euro, even though that creates other problems - e.g. Greece.)

 

[The_Prince2017]

So that means I am screwed...