Selling abroad from India: what to settle before the first international order

Someone in Toronto has asked on Instagram whether you ship to Canada, and you want to say yes. Before you do, settle how the parcel travels, who pays the import charges, what happens to a return and which currency you price in, and only then spend on ads. Duty and tax rules differ by country and change, so check the current position with your CA or a customs agent before the first order leaves.

Start with one country, chosen by your enquiries

The first overseas buyer for a small Indian brand is often not a stranger who saw an ad. It is a cousin's friend in Leicester, a customer who moved to Dubai, a tourist who bought from your stall at Dilli Haat and wants more. They write on WhatsApp or in your Instagram messages, and they already trust the product.

So pick the country those messages come from, two at most, and switch on shipping only there. "We ship worldwide" on day one means every country's import rules at once, and you have read none of them.

How will the parcel travel, and what will it really cost?

A small seller has three routes and usually needs only the first two.

Express courier, booked direct or through a shipping aggregator. Tracked door to door, quick, priced in weight slabs. The normal starting point.

The postal export route. Cheaper for light parcels and slower, with patchier tracking once the parcel leaves India. Fine for a gift nobody is waiting on.

A bulk shipment to a fulfilment partner abroad. Only once one country gives steady orders, since you pay to store unsold stock.

Couriers charge on the bigger of the actual weight and the box size, so a light quilt in a large carton costs far more than its weight suggests. Pack the pieces overseas buyers ask for most the way you would export them, weigh and measure each box, and ask for a written rate to your chosen country. Ask the same courier which products they will not carry or need extra papers for. Attars, anything with a battery, liquids and foods are the common surprises.

Who pays the import charges at the other end?

This is the decision that goes wrong first, and it has to be made before you set a price.

Whichever you choose, say it on the product page and in the cart, not in a shipping policy nobody opens. Many countries let small parcels in without duty below a value limit, and those limits change. Do not price on a figure from someone's blog; ask the courier or a customs agent for the current position in each country.

What happens when an overseas buyer wants to send it back?

Return postage from Canada can cost more than the kurta inside it, and a parcel coming back into India needs paperwork of its own. Decide your rule before the first order, not when the first complaint arrives.

For low-value pieces, a replacement or refund without asking for the item back is cheaper than the return. For clothing, most of the work is upstream: give measurements in centimetres and inches, because a UK 12 and an Indian M are not the same conversation. For damage in transit, ask for photographs and the courier label within two days of delivery, then replace or refund.

Whether you must accept change-of-mind returns depends on the buyer's country, so ask before you write the policy, and do not promise "easy returns" to a country you have never shipped a return from.

Which currency do you price and collect in?

A buyer in Toronto who sees ₹2,400 (an illustrative price) has to do the sum, then wonders what their bank will add. Price in the buyer's currency if your store platform allows it, and decide whether prices follow the exchange rate or are reset by hand when the rupee moves.

Ask your payment gateway whether international cards are switched on for your account, then test the checkout with a card issued abroad. Keep every foreign payment coming into the business account, because money routed through a relative is a mess at GST time. Your CA will tell you which bank papers to keep for each payment.

Imagine a block-print seller in Jaipur

Imagine a Jaipur seller of hand block-printed bedsheets (an invented case, with invented figures) whose Instagram messages fill up with buyers in the UK. The seller says yes to the first dozen, prices in rupees, ships by express courier and leaves the import charges to the buyer, because that keeps the price low.

Three buyers then get a courier message asking for import charges before delivery. Two pay and grumble in their reviews. One refuses, and the parcel comes back to Jaipur with freight paid both ways.

Sorting it out took a few days of calls. The seller priced UK orders in pounds with delivery and duty included, after a customs agent confirmed the current charges. A smaller carton cut the box-size charge. One line went beside the price: "Price includes delivery, duty and taxes to the UK." Only then did ads run, shown in the UK alone. The refused parcel had cost about ₹5,200 in freight both ways, and margins stayed thin on the first few orders because the duty estimate was a little low.

When to wait before running ads abroad

Ads abroad make sense once you have shipped real orders to that country, handled one return and know your landed cost per piece. Before that, ad money only makes the first four mistakes in public.

Skip direct-to-buyer selling if your product is heavy and cheap. A cast-iron kadai can cost more to post than to make, and goods like that travel better by the carton to a wholesaler abroad. That route is covered in how to get export orders.

Pick the country your messages come from and pack the pieces those buyers want. Get the courier rate and the duty answer for that country in writing before you reply that yes, you ship. The store that takes single orders from abroad is the one you run at home, covered in e-commerce sales and marketing; export and international market development is the service for finding buyers abroad. When you are ready, tell us what you need.