For interstate Roll-on-Roll-off (Ro-Ro) Short Sea Shipping (SSS) operations in India's East ASEAN Growth Area (EAGA), this article tries to identify the most important variables for its success (BIMP-EAGA). Accordingly, it is believed that the identification of key success factors for SSS operations would guide stakeholders in allocating their limited resources to focus on the most critical variables. A literature review was the first stage in identifying significant elements that have led to a successful SSS functioning for this study. However, there is currently a lack of literature on SSS outside of Europe and North America, which may differ in the factors essential for a successful SSS operation. A Delphi poll of sub-regional SSS specialists was thus carried out in order to discover any new elements and gauge their views on the relative relevance of all of the parameters concerned. The results of this research show that the sub-region has eight unique success characteristics. SSS research outside Europe and North America is rare, therefore this study is likely to help generate new understanding in this field and inspire researchers to conduct similar studies elsewhere.