Agarwood, or oud as the world knows it, is among the most coveted natural aromatic raw materials in global perfumery ~ and India’s strongest resource base lies in the Northeast. North Eastern States hold 96.6 per cent of India’s agarwood resource, about 135 million trees, with Assam and Tripura dominating the base. This concentration gives the region a distinct natural advantage over other parts of India and is the natural anchor for India’s entry into oud trade. Since 2019, the agarwood sector has grown rapidly, with tree numbers increasing from 1.5 crore in 2021 to 2.2 crore in 2026.

Of these, 1.5 crore trees are under 10 years old and 0.7 crore are over 10 years old. Legal exports began after 2023, with 40 kg of agarwood chips and 18.5 kg of agar oil exported to the Middle East, along with smaller quantities sent to New Delhi. For the Northeast, agarwood is not just a natural resource. It is civilisational. Assam’s relationship with agarwood predates any modern export policy. The region’s manuscript culture used sanchipat, or agarutvak ~ the treated bark of Aquilaria malaccensis ~ as writing material, a cultural memory that endures to this day. Northeast India does not need to construct an oud identity for export brochures. It needs to reclaim one.

This distinction matters enormously in a global market that increasingly pays a premium for authenticity. When a buyer in Dubai or Paris reaches for oud, they are not simply purchasing a fragrance ingredient ~ they are purchasing provenance, heritage and trust. The Northeast carries all three. That combination is the Northeast’s structural advantage ~ one that cannot be replicated by plantation programmes elsewhere or synthesised in a laboratory. The commercial opportunity is substantial. Agarwood demand is concentrated in high-value fragrance, incense and wellness markets, with strong demand in Gulf Cooperation Council countries, especially the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and growing interest across the US and Europe for luxury perfumery and natural aromatic ingredients.

A recent estimate places the global agarwood chips market at US$44.29 billion in 2025, projected to reach about $90.56 billion by 2035. While these market estimates vary because agarwood moves across chips, oil, incense, cosmetics, medicine and informal channels, the direction is clear ~ oud is a premium global ingredient. The question is not whether this market will grow. It will, of course. The question is who captures the value. India has already begun to cash on this opportunity. For exporters, the opening is both regulatory and commercial. During 2024–27, the export quota for artificially propagated agarwood material has been raised from 25,000 kg to 1,51,080 kg for chips and from 1,500 kg to 7,050 kg for oil, significantly widening the legal export window for compliant trade.

The DGFT has also moved the Certificate of Origin process onto the Trade Connect Platform, replacing a largely offline system with a paperless, traceable workflow, further streamlining underway to timelines and improve transparency. In luxury natural products, documentation is not merely paperwork, it is a potential opportunity to access premium market. It is a signal that India is ready to compete at scale in the legal, compliant segment of the global........

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