E-commerce Export Shipping from India
Selling to customers abroad from India, with the route, the duty threshold and the returns policy chosen deliberately rather than by default.
Three routes out, and most sellers only know one
Cross-border e-commerce from India moves by one of three mechanisms, and sellers routinely use whichever their first courier proposed rather than the one that fits their order profile.
Express courier is fastest, simplest and most expensive; the courier acts as broker at the far end and the customer usually gets a clean delivery. Postal export is materially cheaper for small, low-value parcels and slower, with less tracking granularity. Consolidated air cargo into a destination fulfilment point is the cheapest per unit at volume, but requires you to hold stock abroad and deal with import as an importer rather than parcel by parcel.
The right answer depends on order value, weight, destination and how many orders you ship a week — and it changes as you grow, which is why it is worth revisiting rather than setting once.
De minimis is the number that decides your landed price
Most countries set a value threshold below which import duty is not collected on a consignment, and often a separate, lower threshold for sales tax. Below it, a parcel clears with no charge to your customer. Above it, the customer is asked for duty and tax before delivery — and a meaningful share of them simply refuse the parcel.
These thresholds vary enormously and several major markets have reduced or removed them for e-commerce in recent years, which has changed the economics for sellers who had built pricing around them. Knowing the current threshold for each of your top destinations is not a compliance detail; it is a pricing input.
We will tell you where your typical order value sits relative to the threshold in each market you sell to, because that single comparison usually explains your refusal and return rate better than anything else.
Who pays the duty, and why it should not be a surprise
The choice is delivered-duty-unpaid, where the customer is billed on arrival, or delivered-duty-paid, where you have collected it at checkout and it is settled before delivery.
DDU looks cheaper and produces the refusals. A customer who bought at one price and is asked for another before the courier will hand over the parcel is not a happy customer, and the parcel comes back to you with freight incurred both ways. DDP costs more visibly and converts far better, because the price at checkout is the price.
For anything above the de minimis threshold in the destination market, DDP is almost always the better commercial choice even though it looks worse in a rate comparison.
What we handle
The export side is where Indian sellers most often lose money and time, because the paperwork is unfamiliar and the refunds are easy to miss.
- Route selection per destination and order profile, rather than one carrier for everything
- Export documentation and clearance under the appropriate e-commerce provisions
- IGST refund handling on exports, which many small sellers never claim
- HS classification of your catalogue, done once properly so every consignment is consistent
- Restricted-item screening before listing, not after a seizure
- Returns routing, including whether a return is worth shipping back at all
Returns from abroad are frequently not worth having back
The instinct is to bring returns home. For a low-value item shipped internationally, the return freight plus the import duty back into India often exceeds what the item is worth, and you have paid twice to recover something you will discount anyway.
The alternatives are worth pricing honestly: refund without return for low-value goods, aggregate returns at a destination address and bring them back in one consolidated shipment, or dispose or liquidate locally. We work the numbers per SKU band rather than applying a single policy, because the right answer for a fifty-dollar item is not the right answer for a five-hundred-dollar one.
Get the classification right once
Every parcel you send carries an HS code, and if the catalogue was classified casually then every consignment repeats the same error at scale. Under-classification invites a penalty; over-classification means your customers pay duty they did not owe, which shows up as refusals.
Classifying the catalogue properly is a one-off exercise with a compounding return, and it is the first thing we do with a seller shipping regular volume.
Asked often about this service
Should we ship DDU or DDP?
DDP for anything above the destination’s de minimis threshold — the checkout price becomes the final price and refusals fall sharply. DDU is defensible only when your typical order sits comfortably below the threshold so no charge arises.
Can we claim IGST refunds on e-commerce exports?
Yes, exports are zero-rated and the input tax is refundable, but the claim depends on the export being documented correctly at the outset. A lot of small sellers never claim it because their shipping route was never set up to evidence the export properly.
Is courier or postal better?
Postal is cheaper for small, low-value, non-urgent parcels; courier is faster with better tracking and cleaner customs handling at the far end. Most sellers should use both, chosen per destination and order value rather than defaulting to one.
Should we hold stock abroad?
Only once your volume into a market justifies it. Holding stock overseas cuts per-unit cost and delivery time substantially but makes you an importer in that country, with the tax registration and obligations that follow. We would rather you reach that point deliberately than drift into it.