Tell us what you are shipping.
Send us the cargo, the origin and destination, and the date you need it there. We will come back with a practical routing and a clear quotation — usually within one working day.
Speak to us directly
sales@seemleiusinternational.comOur offices
When to expect a reply
We work Indian business hours and read enquiries the same day they arrive. A quotation usually follows within one working day; complex or project cargo may take a little longer while we survey it properly.
Request a quote
The more you can tell us, the sharper the quote. None of it is compulsory beyond a way to reach you.
Your enquiry is with us.
A coordinator will come back with a routing and quotation, usually within one working day.
Six things that turn an email into a real number.
Most enquiries stall for the same reason: they describe what someone wants to move, but not the conditions it has to move under. A rate is a function of volume, distance, mode and access, and we can only work with the parts you give us.
If you do not have all six to hand, send what you have. We would rather open the conversation and fill the gaps on a call than wait a week for a perfect brief — and on a first shipment, the gaps are usually the interesting part.
- Both addresses, not just the cities A postcode at each end tells us which gateway genuinely serves you and whether the final leg is a straight run or a two-hour climb into a hill town. Cities alone hide both.
- An idea of the volume For a home, a room-by-room list, or photographs taken from each doorway. For cargo, the number of packages with dimensions and gross weight — or the container size, if that has already been settled with your buyer.
- The dates that matter When the goods are ready, and when they need to be at the other end. If only one of the two is fixed, say which — it changes the mode we recommend before it changes the price.
- Access at both ends Floor and lift, how close a lorry can park, whether a container can reach the door or has to be shuttled in a smaller vehicle. More quotations are wrong about access than about volume.
- What the goods are, and what they are worth A plain description and a value. The commodity drives the classification, the classification drives the duty, and a vague description written at enquiry stage turns into a query at the border weeks later.
- A phone number as well as an email Nearly every quotation needs one clarifying question. A two-minute call settles it; the same question sent by email across two time zones costs two days.
What happens once the enquiry is in.
Read the same day
Enquiries land with a coordinator during Indian business hours and every one of them is read by a person. Nothing is dropped into an automated reply and left there until someone remembers it.
Questions, if we have them
Where something is missing — usually access, the commodity or a firm date — you get two or three specific questions back, not a second form to fill in from the beginning.
A survey, where the volume needs one
Anything beyond a few cartons is surveyed before the figure is fixed: on video within a day or two, in person where the goods, the stairs or the parking make that the sensible option.
A written quotation
The routing, the expected transit window and the charges set out stage by stage, so you can lay it beside anyone else’s and compare like with like.
The realistic timings: a straightforward air or LCL enquiry usually comes back inside one working day. A door-to-door move that needs a survey and a quotation from the agent at the far end takes two to three, because part of the answer is being written in another time zone and we would rather send a figure we can hold than a placeholder we cannot. Project and heavy-lift enquiries take longer again — that work is a study, not a rate.
A ballpark and a surveyed quote are different animals.
Ask for a ballpark and you will get one: a range built on the volume you have described and what the lane is costing this month. It is the right tool for deciding whether to ship at all, whether to ship now or in six weeks, and whether the budget you have in mind is anywhere near reality. It is not a figure to sign against, because it rests on your estimate of the volume rather than ours.
A surveyed quote behaves differently. Once someone has listed the goods, measured the awkward pieces and looked at the stairs, the volume stops being an estimate and the price stops moving. That is the number that goes into the contract, and it holds unless the shipment itself changes — items added on packing day, an address swapped after booking, a date pushed into a peak week.
The trap when comparing two quotations is that they rarely price the same journey. One may stop at the destination port while the other carries on to the door; one may carry the destination agent’s handling and the other leave it as a note at the bottom. Line them up stage by stage — origin, freight, destination, delivery — before deciding which is cheaper.
How a survey is booked, and what it covers.
A survey is arranged by phone or email once you have told us roughly what is moving. A video survey needs nothing more than a charged phone and half an hour when the rooms are reasonably clear; we book those within a day or two, including evenings, because they are short. An in-person survey is scheduled around your day and takes about an hour for a flat, longer for a house with a loft or a store room.
The surveyor is not there to inspect your housekeeping. The point is to leave with a volume nobody has to guess at, a list of everything that needs special treatment, and an honest view of how a crew and a vehicle will actually reach your door on the day.
- Room-by-room volume, including cupboards, lofts and anything already in storage
- Items that need crating — glass, stone, art, instruments, chandeliers
- Furniture to be dismantled, and what that leaves to rebuild at the far end
- What is not travelling: sold, given away, or staying with family
- Access at the door — stairs, lift size, parking, gate and society restrictions
- Anything that cannot ship at all, flagged now rather than on packing day
Where your enquiry is likely to land.
Both offices quote, and both are reachable on the same number and inbox, so an enquiry sent to the wrong one is walked across rather than bounced back at you. If you would like it to arrive in the right place first time, this is roughly how the work divides.
Cochin
The southern operation. Cochin port and the Kerala air gateway, household moves leaving Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and the bulk of our personal-effects clearances — which run under different customs rules from commercial cargo and are worth having in practised hands.
Mumbai
The west-coast operation. Nhava Sheva and Mundra volumes, export bookings for shippers across Maharashtra and Gujarat, project and heavy-lift planning, and the corporate accounts that move on the same lanes month after month.
Neither office is the limit of where we work. A shipment leaving Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad is run by whichever of the two holds the account, using our clearance network at the gateway itself — so you keep one contact rather than acquiring a new one every time the cargo changes state.
Something already moving, or something not booked yet?
A shipment already in transit
Call. If a container is sitting, a flight has been rolled or a delivery window has shifted, a phone call reaches the person holding your file faster than anything you can type. Have the booking reference, the bill of lading or air waybill number and, if you have it, the container number — with those we are looking at the same screen you are inside a minute.
A shipment you have not booked yet
Use the form above. A new enquiry needs detail more than it needs speed, and the form asks for the things a quotation cannot be built without. Email works just as well if you would rather attach an inventory, a packing list, a supplier’s proforma or a set of photographs — anything that saves us both a round of questions.
What a commercial enquiry needs to include.
Commercial cargo is quoted from the same information as anything else, plus the handful of identifiers customs needs before an entry can be filed in your name. Send what you hold today; where a piece is missing we will tell you what to apply for and roughly how long it takes to come through.
| What to send | Why we ask for it |
|---|---|
| IEC | The Importer-Exporter Code issued by the DGFT is what identifies you to Indian customs. Without it no shipping bill or bill of entry can be filed on your behalf. |
| GST number | Decides how the movement is invoiced and taxed, and appears on the documents raised against the consignment. |
| Commodity description | In plain language rather than a catalogue reference. What the goods are made of and what they are used for is what decides the classification. |
| HS code, if you have one | If your buyer or supplier has already given you a tariff heading, send it and we will check it rather than assume it. The classification sets the duty rate and any exemption the goods qualify for. |
| Incoterm | Tells us where your responsibility ends and the counterparty’s begins, which in turn decides which legs and which charges belong inside your quotation. |
| Value and currency | The invoice value underpins the customs assessment and the sum insured. It is not what freight is priced on, but it is the figure the border reads. |
| Packing details | Pallet or carton counts, dimensions, gross and net weight, and whether any timber is heat-treated. Chargeable weight and container fit both fall out of these numbers. |
Dangerous goods, temperature-controlled cargo and anything oversized belong in the first email rather than at booking. Each of them changes the routing, the packing and the paperwork, and occasionally decides whether a particular carrier will accept the shipment at all.
Why a quotation carries a date.
Freight rates are not list prices. Carriers re-issue them on cycles — often fortnightly on the ocean side, and faster than that when capacity tightens — so what we quote is what we can buy on the day we quote it. That is why our quotations carry a validity date instead of an open-ended promise we would only have to withdraw.
Three things reliably move a price between quotation and booking. Season is the first: a booking made into the weeks before a major festival, or into a Western retail peak, pays what that week costs rather than what a quiet one did. Currency is the second, where a rate bought in dollars is settled in rupees. Volume is the third — two extra cartons will not change your figure, two extra rooms will.
If your dates are still soft, tell us the range rather than picking one. We will quote against the cheapest week inside it, which is a conversation worth having before the calendar hardens.
What you send us is used to price and plan the shipment, and is shared only with the parties who have to see it: the carrier, the customs authority, and the agent handling delivery at the far end. Quotations stay on file, so a repeat booking on the same lane starts from what you were quoted last time rather than from a blank page.