While he was living in New York several years ago, Sankarson Banerjee tried to convince his mother in Kolkata to replace her broken television. But the process was too intimidating for his mother. So during a trip home, Mr Banerjee went to a store and bought her one himself.
The experience of buying products for family back home is familiar to millions of Indians living overseas. Mr Banerjee was convinced that the shopping process could be far smoother and faster. "If I'm only in India for seven days, there is no time to do research. I don't know where to buy things in Kolkata. I don't even know Kolkata any more."
Today Mr Banerjee is chief executive of Futurebazaar.com, the online shopping website of India's largest retailer, the Future Group, which hopes to become India's Amazon.com.
The one-year-old website generates more than 90 per cent of its sales in India on thousands of items from mobile phones and televisions to frying pans and steam irons. Products are delivered to customers within days from warehouses spread across India.
But after Future noticed a size-able number of international credit cards being used at its stores, Futurebazaar.com decided to target Indians living in the US and the UK. It encourages these people to register on its site.
Mr Banerjee reckons that overseas Indians buying items for relatives in India could account for 20 to 30 per cent of Futurebazaar.com's business next year, which would translate into sales worth up to $18m. There are between 20m and 25m Indians working and living overseas, a diaspora that "offers huge potential as a catalyst for India's economic growth and ongoing global economic integration", according to a 2006 JPMorgan report.
The retailer is one of a growing number of companies, from banks to carmakers, that have set their sights on "non-resident Indians". Indian telecom group Reliance Communications has sold 1.5m phone cards in the US, the UK and Australia, mainly to NRIs who want to call India.
Large banks offer "NRI services", which include money transfer and special bank accounts. India is the world's largest recipient of remittances from overseas workers, ahead of Mexico and China. Remittances to India surged to $26.8bn in 2006-07 from $2.1bn in 1990-91, according to the World Bank.
Remittances to India are a big growth area for Western Union, the financial services company, which has been offering money transfer services since 1871. The number of outlets in India surged from 3,000 in 2001 to 50,000 outlets at the beginning of this year, and the group plans further aggressive expansion.
Money transfers are a significant boost to the Indian economy and encourage its residents to spend on everything from education to consumer goods. According to the World Bank, every dollar transferred to a developing country contributes three dollars to its economy, partly by encouraging entrepreneurship and investments by the recipient households.
While money sent home is important to the economy, Indian carmaker Maruti Suzuki encourages NRIs to buy goods in India for their relatives rather that send remittances for them to spend.
Jagdish Khattar, who retired as Maruti's managing director last year, conceived of the idea over dinner with some Indian financial analysts living in New York. When they learned that monthly payments for a small car would cost just a couple of hundred dollars, one analyst considered buying a vehicle for a nephew as an incentive to study at college.
"So many Indians overseas are doing well. They would like to give their families a car," Mr Khattar told the Financial Times last year. "It takes away that guilty feeling."
The country's largest carmaker in 2006 launched a website for overseas Indians to order cars in rupees and get them delivered to a relative's doorstep from a local Maruti dealership. The scheme, dubbed Dil se, Hindi for "from the heart", offers warranties, maintenance and other services to ease trepidation about buying a car online.
So far Maruti has sold about 3,500 cars online, a drop in the ocean compared with its annual sales of about 675,000 vehicles. But it hopes to use this side of the business to increase its global reach. Online car sales have come from 52 countries, reflecting the wide reach of the Indian Diaspora.
Futurebazaar.com is initially focusing on Indians living in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Between 1.5m and 2m Indians live in the US alone.
In those countries the younger generation of Indians "enjoy a high lifestyle", says Mr Banerjee . "They feel guilty about it and want to buy things for their parents."
This kind of proxy spending makes sense for another reason. "Parents feel that consumption expenditure is not something they do. Twenty years ago incomes were low. It is culturally difficult for them to consume, so their children do it for them."
The effort to reach overseas customers requires focused marketing such as translating promotional materials into regional languages. Western Union runs advertisements in Indian languages such as Malayalam, Tamil and Punjabi in places such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, the US and Singapore.
The company also sponsors big cricket and field hockey matches and uses product placement in Bollywood films. Western Union's signature yellow logo appeared in last year's Namaste London.
Maruti runs advertisements on websites used by Indians, such as matrimonial portals and sites in local languages such as Gujarati or Malayalam, as well as in local newspapers read by Indian communities abroad. These include the Khaleej Times in the Middle East and India Abroad in the US.
Futurebazaar.com, which expects to open a US subsidiary this month, has been targeting Indian communities by passing out fliers at a large Indian grocery in Edison, New Jersey, a city with a large Indian population.
It also sponsors events that attract large numbers of overseas Indians, such as annual regional festivals in the US. A big Bengali mela (gathering) is held in a different US city each year and attracts up to 40,000 people.
Futurebazaar.com might also market at conferences hosted by major Indian business and university associations, such as The Indus Entrepreneurs, whose networking events are attended by thousands.
Most of all Futurebazaar.com relies on television and print advertisements and marketing within India, where they are considerably cheaper than in the west. The hope is that potential recipients of goods in India will tell their sons and daughters overseas about the ease of buying online.
"If your mother tells you it is a good idea to go to Futurebazaar, you will," says Mr Banerjee .
Marketers who speak the many languages of the Indian Diaspora Marketing to the Indian Diaspora is "very tricky", according to Sankarson Banerjee , chief executive of Futurebazaar.com. "When you say NRI [non-resident Indian], there is not one single kind of market."
Indians who migrate to the Middle East for low-skilled work in construction are a different demographic from those who take white-collar jobs in the US. Western Union, the money transfer company, tailors marketing and advertising for the Indian communities in particular regions.
The large flow of migrants from Punjab state tend to go to the Gulf countries, the US and the UK; from Andhra Pradesh to the US, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia; from Tamil Nadu to Singapore, Malaysia and the US; and from Kerala to the Gulf.
Accordingly, Western Union's advertisements in Gulf countries where some 3m to 4m Indians reside are in Punjabi or Malayalam (the language of Kerala). Its marketing to Singapore and Malaysia, which together count about 1.1m Indians, is in Tamil.