How small businesses actually ship abroad

The honest summary is that there are four routes out of India, they suit different volumes, and the one that is right for you at five orders a month is wrong for you at fifty.

1. India Post

Good at: being cheap. Nothing beats it on price for a small, light parcel, and for a seller sending the occasional order it is a perfectly reasonable answer.

Bad at: speed, tracking and certainty. Transit is measured in weeks on some lanes, the tracking stops being useful once the parcel leaves India, and when something goes wrong there is nobody to ask. For a gift that is fine. For a customer who paid you and is waiting, the support burden lands on you.

2. A shipping aggregator

Good at: volume, dashboards and integrations. If you are running a real catalogue with daily orders, plugging an aggregator into your store is the right shape and the rates are competitive.

Bad at: letting you in. Their published requirements ask for an IEC, an AD code, a PAN and an Aadhaar before you can book anything, and some add a GST number. If you are registered, this is a non-issue. If you are a boutique running off Instagram below the GST threshold, it is a closed door, and that is the single most common reason sellers end up talking to us.

3. A forwarder, which is us

Good at: low and irregular volume, and the unregistered seller. You courier the parcel to our warehouse domestically at your cost, and we handle the international leg. The price comes from our scale after we weigh the packed box, not from an estimate, and we photograph the reading. Your customer gets tracking in your name. If you are not a registered exporter, your customer receives the parcel as their own and pays the shipping through a link, so there is no export for you to file.

4. Direct export under your own IEC

Good at: cost per parcel, once there is volume.

Bad at: being worth building for a handful of orders. It is a carrier account, an export declaration, a commercial invoice, KYC and a support burden the first time something goes missing. For five orders a month it is not worth the setup, which is precisely why most sellers turn those orders away instead.

So which one

Roughly: an occasional parcel to a friend or relative, use the post office. A handful of real customer orders a month and no registration, a forwarder. A real catalogue with daily orders and the paperwork in place, an aggregator. Consistent weekly volume, build your own direct arrangement.

Whichever you pick

• Describe the contents properly. “Cotton saree, 1 piece” clears. “Apparel” invites a look.
• Check the destination before you list the product. Perfumes and aerosols are refused outright as flammable, the UK takes sealed vegetarian food but no meat or dairy, and a few destinations are strict about food generally. Find out before you sell it, not after.

There is a longer piece on the general shape of this in our guide to shipping abroad for a small Indian business, written for the same reader.

The questions new sellers ask next: who pays the customs duty, whether your customer abroad can pay the shipping and your first order from abroad, step by step. By product: books, cosmetics and skincare and product samples.

The two ways a parcel leaves here

Everything on this page turns on which of these you are, so it is worth settling first. There are two, and we run both.

If your business is registered as an exporter

You have a GSTIN, an IEC and an AD code. Your parcel ships as your export: it goes under your own IEC, and you authorise our carrier to file the shipping bill (CSB-V) on your behalf. You pay the freight, and the commercial invoice carries your business.

If your business is not registered as an exporter

We call this the simple route, and it is the one most Instagram sellers, boutiques and small shops start on. On this route you do not export at all. Your customer abroad receives the parcel as their own, under our personal forwarding terms — the same terms any individual uses to send their own belongings home. You book the shipment here, put your own bill for the order inside the parcel, and send it to our warehouse. We weigh it, photograph it, and send your customer a link to pay the shipping. As soon as they pay, it goes, and they get tracking in your name.

Where to start

Open a business account and tell us what you sell. We call every new business on WhatsApp within a working day, usually to settle exactly the question this page is about, and you are on the right route before your first parcel moves.