ExportManagementfromIndia—documents,customs,container,dispatch.

Anatomy of an India export shipment

Most buyers underestimate the complexity of moving a container out of India. The visible cost is the ocean freight; the invisible cost is documentation, customs clearance, port handling, hinterland trucking, fumigation and the inland logistics chain between factory and port. Get any one of these wrong and the container sits at the port accruing demurrage at $80-120/day. Get them all right and the buyer never notices anything happened.

Asia Sourcing's export management collapses this chain into a single workstream owned by our Delhi NCR documentation team. We coordinate with the factory on packing readiness, our CHA on customs filings, our freight forwarder on shipping space, our trucker on inland movement and our destination-port partner on arrival handling. The buyer's only touchpoint is one named export coordinator who emails daily updates from the day the container is sealed to the day it lands.

The six active export ports — which one ships your container

Port choice is not a default. Each Indian port has its own berth availability, shipping line coverage, hinterland trucking time and clearance speed. We pick the right port per shipment based on factory location, destination, freight rate and shipping schedule.

Documentation — the full export dossier

Each container ships with a documentation dossier in two halves: the shipping pack (handed to the freight forwarder and customs) and the buyer's pack (sent to the buyer's customs broker). Below is the full list our team prepares.

Customs and CHA — how it actually works

We operate with two licensed Customs House Agents (CHAs) — one in Delhi NCR, one in Mumbai — covering all six ports. The CHA is the legal agent for customs filing; they hold the IEC (Import Export Code), they file the Shipping Bill, they interact with the customs officer at the port. We work alongside them as the cargo owner / coordinator.

• Pre-shipment — CHA prepares the Shipping Bill against the Commercial Invoice + Packing List. Filed electronically through ICEGATE typically 24-48 hours before vessel cutoff.
• Customs examination — Random ~3% of containers are physically examined. We accompany the inspection; on a passed exam, container is sealed and moved to stack.
• DEPB / RoDTEP / drawback — Where applicable, we file the export incentive claims; refunds typically land 30-60 days post-dispatch. These can offset 1-3% of FOB.
• Late-amendment handling — Spec changes after Shipping Bill is filed cost time and money. We avoid this by locking specs 5 working days before dispatch and re-filing only on critical changes.
• GST refunds — We coordinate IGST refund claims on the buyer's behalf for the factory; this is a major working-capital issue for Indian exporters and we facilitate it actively.

INCOTERMS — which one suits which buyer

INCOTERMS (International Commercial Terms) define who pays for what and where risk transfers between seller and buyer. Asia Sourcing supports the four most common terms for India exports.

Container loading supervision — what happens on dispatch day

Container loading is the single point where a 60-day program can fail in three hours. Wrong SKUs loaded, wrong quantities, container not sealed properly, seal number not photographed, packing list mismatched against actual carton count. Our Container Loading Inspection (CLI) protocol is the last line of defence.

• Inspector arrives 2-3 hours before scheduled loading. Verifies the container number against the booking, photographs the empty container interior.
• Each pallet is verified against the packing list before loading; carton-level SKU and quantity checked on a sample basis (AQL 2.5).
• Load pattern photographed pallet-by-pallet — useful for insurance claims if cargo shifts in transit.
• Container sealed with a numbered customs seal. Inspector photographs the seal against the container number — single best fraud-prevention photo in the dossier.
• CLI report + full photo dossier emailed to the buyer within 24 hours of dispatch.