A US company hires somebody in Bengaluru and the obvious move is to post them a laptop. It’s rarely the right one. The blocker isn’t the courier, it’s that somebody has to be the importer on record, and a foreign company with no local presence is usually not able to be that somebody.

TL;DR

  • The first question is not shipping cost. It is who acts as importer of record.
  • A company with no Indian entity generally cannot import easily in its own name.
  • Shipping to the employee personally pushes the customs problem onto them, which is a poor plan and sometimes an expensive one.
  • Buying locally through a provider with an Indian presence is usually faster and simpler than importing.
  • Duty, tax treatment and documentation requirements change. Check them at the time with somebody local rather than trusting an article.
  • Whatever route you pick, decide who owns the asset and how it comes back before the first order.

Why the courier is not the problem

Plenty of carriers will quote you a door-to-door price into India in a few days. That quote is real and it isn’t the thing standing in your way.

Commercial goods entering a country need somebody named as the importer, responsible for the declaration, for any duty and tax, and for the paperwork being correct. That role carries obligations. It isn’t a formality you can wave through by ticking a box on a waybill. A company with no legal presence in the country typically can’t take it on in its own name.

So the question becomes who does. And the honest list of candidates is short.

The four routes, and what each one costs you

Ship to the employee personally. Tempting and usually a mistake. You’re making an individual the importer of a commercial asset they don’t own, which can leave them handling a customs process and a charge at their own door. Several companies do this once and never again.

Use your own entity, if you have one. Clean, and only available to companies that already operate in India. If you have an entity, your finance team almost certainly already knows the process and this stops being an interesting question.

Use an importer of record service. A third party takes the role on your behalf. It works, it costs money, and it adds a step, but it keeps the asset in your name and off your employee’s doorstep.

Buy locally. No import at all. A provider with a presence in India buys the machine inside the country and delivers it domestically, which sidesteps the whole question and is usually the fastest route by a wide margin.

Why local purchase usually wins

Three reasons, and only one of them is cost.

Speed. A domestic delivery runs in days. An import runs at the speed of customs, which is predictable on a good day and not on others, and a new starter waiting on a machine is a problem that compounds.

Support and warranty. A machine bought locally carries local warranty and local service. An imported one may not, and discovering that when a screen fails in month four is an entirely avoidable annoyance that costs somebody a working week.

Keyboard and power. Small, and it matters daily. Locally bought hardware turns up with the right plug on the charger and the keyboard layout the person was expecting to type on.

What to do:

  • Ask every vendor whether they buy locally in India or import into it.
  • If they import, ask who is named as importer of record.
  • Get the realistic door-to-door timeline, not the carrier’s transit time.
  • Confirm warranty and service are valid in-country for whatever arrives.

A company that learned this once

A 48-person US company hired two engineers in India and posted laptops from their office. Both shipments stopped at customs.

One was released after a fortnight and a charge that nobody had budgeted for, paid in the end by the employee and reimbursed awkwardly through expenses. The other went back. Both new starters spent their first three weeks on personal machines, which created a security problem nobody had planned for on top of the delay.

They buy locally now through a provider with an Indian presence. Machines arrive in under a week and the question hasn’t come up since.

What this article deliberately does not tell you

No duty percentages, no tax rates, no clearance times in days.

Those figures change, they vary by product classification and by the specifics of a shipment, and an article quoting one from last year is worse than useless because it reads as authoritative. Anybody giving you a firm number for your situation should be a customs broker, a freight forwarder with Indian operations, or your own advisers, and they should be giving it to you this month rather than in general.

What doesn’t change is the structure. Somebody must be the importer, a foreign company usually can’t be, and buying inside the country removes the question. Build your decision on that structure, and get the actual numbers from somebody who is accountable for being right about them.

Where a platform helps

RemoAsset is our own product, and the relevant capability is narrow: procurement and retrieval across 80+ countries, which means buying in-country where that’s the sensible route rather than importing into it, with each device tracked from issue through return. From $1,499 a year on the Subscription tier for companies with 50 to 5,000+ employees, including a 60 per cent reduction on retrieval charges.

Three limits. It has no network discovery, so it knows about devices it handled rather than every machine your people own. It has no software licence management, so none of your application estate is covered. And only the Subscription tier publishes a figure, with pay-as-you-go quoted on request.

Workwize, Firstbase, GroWrk, allwhere, Esevel and Deel IT operate in the same space and none publishes a rate card. Rippling IT states more than 130 countries for inventory and shipping, which is a wider number than ours, and publishes no price either.

Checklist

Checklist:

  • A decision on whether you import or buy locally, made before hiring.
  • A named importer of record, if anything is being imported.
  • Written confirmation that no customs charge lands on the employee.
  • Realistic door-to-door timing, from somebody who ships there regularly.
  • Warranty and service confirmed as valid in-country.
  • An agreed route for getting the machine back when they leave.

Final Thoughts

Most teams approach this as a shipping question and get stuck on customs. It’s an importer question, and once you see it that way the options narrow quickly and the right one is usually obvious.

For a company with no Indian entity, buying inside the country is normally faster, simpler and kinder to the person waiting for the machine. And whatever you choose, get the duty and tax detail from somebody who will stand behind it rather than from anybody’s blog, including this one.

Frequently asked questions

Can a US company just post a laptop to an employee in India?

Physically yes, practically it often fails. Commercial goods entering the country need a named importer of record responsible for the declaration, duty and paperwork, and a company with no Indian presence generally can’t take that role in its own name. Shipping to the individual instead pushes a customs process and a possible charge onto your new employee, which is a poor way to start.

What is an importer of record?

The party formally responsible for goods entering a country: the declaration, any duty and tax, and the correctness of the documentation. It carries real obligations. Not an administrative label. Where you have no entity, the options are an importer of record service acting for you, or avoiding import altogether by buying inside the country.

How much is import duty on a laptop into India?

This article deliberately doesn’t say. Because rates and treatment change, vary by classification and depend on the specifics of a shipment. A figure quoted in an article is stale the moment it is written and reads as authoritative, which makes it worse than no figure. Get a current number from a customs broker, a forwarder with Indian operations, or your own advisers.

Is buying locally actually cheaper?

Sometimes. Speed and support usually matter more than the price difference does. Domestic delivery runs in days rather than at the pace of customs, local purchase carries local warranty and service, and the hardware arrives with the right power plug and keyboard layout. Those three together tend to outweigh a modest difference in unit cost.

What if we already have an Indian entity?

Then it’s much simpler. Your finance team probably already has the process written down somewhere. Having a local entity means you can be the importer in your own name, so importing becomes a genuine option rather than a blocked one. Even then, compare it against local purchase on timing and warranty before defaulting to shipping.

How do we get the laptop back afterwards?

Decide before the first order. Because retrieval is harder than delivery and routinely forgotten. If the machine was bought locally it can usually be collected locally, which is far simpler than exporting it back. If it was imported, ask what the return path looks like and what it costs, and get that answer in writing rather than assuming it mirrors the way in.