DAP and DDP Shipping from India
One contract from your floor to your buyer's door — with the destination duty either handled or clearly excluded, never left ambiguous.
The difference that costs people money
DAP and DDP look similar and are not. Under DAP you deliver the goods to the named place and the buyer clears them and pays the import duty. Under DDP you do both — the goods arrive cleared, with duty and destination taxes paid by you.
That one line decides who carries an open-ended cost. Import duty at the destination depends on the classification and valuation applied by a customs authority you do not control, in a country whose rules you may not know. Exporters who quote DDP casually — because the buyer asked for a landed price — routinely discover the duty was higher than assumed, and by then the price is contractual.
We will quote either. What we will not do is let DDP be agreed without a duty estimate on the file, because that is the version of this that goes wrong.
What a door-to-door move actually contains
A single price hides a chain of separately-priced steps, each of which can fail independently. Knowing what is in it is how you tell a real quotation from an optimistic one.
- Collection from your factory and export haulage to the port or airport
- Export customs clearance in India, filed against your IEC and port AD code
- The main carriage — ocean or air — including any transhipment
- Destination terminal handling and, on DDP, the import clearance
- Import duty and destination taxes, on DDP only
- Final delivery to the consignee, including any tail-lift or inside-delivery requirement
- Insurance for the whole chain rather than one leg of it
Where DDP is genuinely hard
Some destinations make DDP difficult or impossible for a foreign seller. Several countries require the importer of record to be locally registered for tax, which a foreign exporter is not — so the “duty paid” part cannot legally be performed by you without a local entity or an agreed arrangement with a party who has one.
In the EU, VAT registration and fiscal representation questions arise. In the Gulf, VAT and the importer-of-record requirement vary by state. In the US, a foreign importer of record is possible but needs a customs bond and brings its own obligations. We check the specific destination before quoting DDP rather than after, and where it is not workable we propose DAP with a duty estimate so the buyer still gets a landed figure.
Documents are the usual cause of delay
On a door-to-door movement the cargo almost never stops for physical reasons. It stops because a certificate of origin was issued against the wrong invoice number, or the packing list quantity does not match the bill of lading, or a fumigation certificate for the wooden pallets was never raised.
These are all knowable in advance. We check the document set against the destination requirement before the goods leave India rather than discovering the gap when the consignment is already sitting under demurrage at the far end, where fixing it costs a great deal more.
What we need to quote a door-to-door rate
A door rate that is not based on the real facts is a rate that gets revised after you have already quoted your buyer. To avoid that, we ask for the following up front.
- Exact collection address, including access — whether a full trailer can reach the loading bay
- Exact delivery address and whether the consignee has a dock or needs a tail lift
- Commodity, HS code, gross and net weight, and packed dimensions
- Declared value, for insurance and for the destination duty estimate
- Incoterm you intend to sell on, and whether that is negotiable
- Any dangerous-goods classification, temperature requirement or partner-agency licence
Why one contract is worth paying for
On a multi-party shipment, the gaps between providers are where consignments sit. The ocean carrier has delivered to the terminal; the broker is waiting for a document; the trucker was never booked because nobody told them the vessel arrived. Each party is correct about their own scope and the cargo is stationary.
A door-to-door contract removes those gaps by making one party accountable for the whole chain — which is only worth anything if that party actually controls the steps rather than subcontracting blind. We file the export clearance ourselves, book the carriage, and instruct the destination broker directly.
Asked often about this service
Should we quote our buyer DAP or DDP?
DAP unless there is a commercial reason not to. It gives the buyer a delivered price without exposing you to a duty calculation made by a foreign authority. Quote DDP when the buyer genuinely cannot import — a consumer, or a company without an import capability — and only with a duty estimate agreed in writing.
Can you give a landed cost before we ship?
Yes, as an estimate with the assumptions stated: the classification used, the duty rate applied and the exchange basis. It will be close on most lanes and cannot be a guarantee, because the destination authority makes the final assessment. Anyone offering a guaranteed landed cost is absorbing a risk they have priced somewhere.
Who is liable if the goods are damaged mid-chain?
Contractually us for the legs we perform, but carrier liability limits are low enough that the practical answer is insurance. All-risks cover on the declared value for the whole door-to-door movement is what actually makes you whole; the liability regime never does.
Does door-to-door work for LCL as well as full containers?
Yes, though the destination leg has more steps because the container is de-stuffed at a CFS before your cargo is released. We quote the realistic window including that, rather than the port-to-port time with a delivery bolted on.