International courier from Bangalore to Greece. Free home pickup.
Collected from your Bengaluru address at whatever hour suits you, packed and documented, and lifted out of Kempegowda on the DTDC International network rather than trucked to another city first. 7–10 working days door-to-door on express, from ₹1,400 per kilogram before fuel surcharge and GST.
Five steps from your Bengaluru door to a Greek address.
Pickup, Bengaluru.
Free at 5 kg+, booked at any hour — the HSR Layout desk is staffed round the clock, so a Whitefield or Jayanagar pickup at eleven at night is routine rather than a favour. We arrive with tape, bubble wrap and the international airway bill already in hand.
Pack & document.
Contents declared item by item, sender KYC photographed, and a printed invoice for anything commercial. Greek clearance is not harsh, but it is literal — a line reading ‘gift items’ with a round-figure value is the thing that turns a clean parcel into a queried one.
BLR gateway, then a European hub.
Kempegowda handles international freight directly, so nothing is lost hauling the parcel to a coastal gateway before it flies. From there the Greece leg almost always trans-ships through a northern European or Gulf hub before Athens — that second hop, not the Bengaluru end, is why this lane sits at 7–10 days rather than 5–7.
Greek customs.
Clearance at Athens Eleftherios Venizelos (ATH), sometimes Thessaloniki (SKG). AADE, the Greek revenue and customs authority, works from the invoice and the recipient’s tax number. Paperwork-clean parcels usually move within a day or two; a missing AFM on anything of real value is the classic hold.
Doorstep delivery.
Last mile through the Greek courier partner — Athens, Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Patras and Larissa on the mainland, and onward to Crete, Rhodes and the Aegean islands. POD reaches you on WhatsApp the same day it is signed for.
Starting rates. Real pricing depends on weight.
Final price depends on actual or volumetric weight, whichever is greater, plus the international fuel surcharge in force on your booking date. GST is extra.
Starting per-kg rates
- Express (7–10 days, door)from ₹1,400 / kg
- Economy (10–15 days, door)from ₹1,050 / kg
- Min billable weight0.5 kg
- Pickup from BengaluruFree at 5 kg+
Volumetric formula: (L × W × H cm) ÷ 5000.
Worked example
A 2 kg parcel — say a Mysore silk saree and a few bars of sandalwood soap for a family in Thessaloniki, roughly 32 × 24 × 14 cm:
- Express, 2 kg × ₹1,400≈ ₹2,800
- + fuel surcharge (~25%)≈ ₹700
- + GST 18%≈ ₹630
- Approx total, express≈ ₹4,130
Indicative only. Fuel surcharge and rate cards change.
What you’ll need at pickup.
Nothing on this lane goes wrong in the air. What goes wrong is a declaration written in a hurry, and that is fixable at your door rather than at Athens.
KYC of the sender
One photo ID for whoever’s name goes on the AWB — Aadhaar, passport or driving licence. Photographed at pickup, held only in DTDC’s own record. If a company is sending, the GSTIN goes on the invoice alongside it.
Invoice, priced line by line
Greece clears under the common EU tariff, so the same duty-relief and VAT logic applies here as anywhere in the union — under €150 there is generally no customs duty, and import VAT is assessed regardless. Genuine person-to-person gifts of modest value are treated more leniently. List every item with its own value; do not total the box.
Recipient AFM, and EOF for medicines
The AFM is the Greek tax number, and putting the recipient’s on the invoice is the single most useful thing you can do for a Greece-bound parcel of any value. For tablets: sealed strip, prescription carrying the doctor’s registration number, and a one-line note on the condition. Medicines are regulated by EOF; no liquids, no injectables.
What Greece doesn’t let in.
Part EU-wide rule, part Greek particularity. The items below are chosen for what Bengaluru senders actually put in boxes, not for a generic prohibited list — the food line is where this lane loses parcels.
Don’t even try
- Meat and dairy in any form — the EU does not permit personal consignments of meat or milk products from outside the union, and factory sealing does not change that. Ghee, milk peda, khova sweets and dairy-based instant mixes are all caught by it.
- Fresh produce, seeds and living plant material — EU plant-health rules bite here. Curry leaves, fresh coconut, saplings and seed packets are refused.
- Agarbatti, dhoop and camphor — treated as flammable solids on the air leg regardless of quantity.
- Anything presented as an antiquity — Greece polices cultural property harder than most of Europe, and a parcel described as an antique invites scrutiny it does not need. Declare a brass or stone piece plainly as a modern reproduction and its year, and it moves without comment.
- Vape liquids and heated-tobacco devices — restricted inbound and not carried on this lane.
- Counterfeit or unbranded-lookalike goods — seized at Athens, and the consignee, not you, deals with the consequences.
- Loose lithium cells, power banks, aerosols and liquids — universal air rules. A laptop with its battery fitted is fine; a spare cell in the same carton is not.
Allowed with care
- Filter coffee powder and dry podis — commercially sealed, ingredients printed, declared honestly. These clear routinely. The wet decoction and any oil-packed pickle do not.
- Silk and cotton textiles — Kanjeevaram, Mysore silk, Ilkal, cottons. Declare a fair value; a saree written down as ₹500 is what triggers an inspection.
- Sandalwood soap, powder and incense-free toiletries — fine as manufactured goods. Sandalwood oil is a liquid and is not carried.
- Sealed dry snacks — chakli, kodubale, mixture, banana chips, factory-packed with an ingredient list and no dairy content.
- Documents and certificates — originals, apostilled papers, seafarer certification. Straightforward, but always express and always tracked.
- Costume jewellery and small consumer electronics — put the make, the model and a real figure against each one. Gold and unhallmarked precious metal are not carried at all.
Ship documents, family parcels, and the coffee.
Greece is a smaller lane out of Bengaluru than the Anglophone destinations, and the traffic on it is unusually specific — a lot of it is not family mail at all.
Seafarer papers to Piraeus
Greek-owned merchant fleets are among the largest in the world and they crew heavily from India, which makes Piraeus and central Athens a standing destination for certification. Discharge books, STCW and medical certificates, signed contracts and endorsements go out from families across the city to manning and crewing offices. Send to the office address, never to a vessel — a ship’s berth changes before the parcel lands.
Family parcels to Athens and Thessaloniki
The Indian community in Greece is small and concentrated: professionals and small-business families around Athens, a scatter across Thessaloniki. What they ask for is the same short list every time — sealed snacks, festival clothing for the children, prescription medicine with paperwork, and things that are simply not sold there.
Wedding and festival outfits
Sarees, lehengas, sherwanis and blouse pieces sent out for a date that will not move. Book express and book early: on a 7–10 day band with a European trans-shipment in the middle, a fortnight of headroom is the difference between a relaxed delivery and a daily phone call to us.
Samples to maritime and shipping-tech buyers
Bengaluru software and hardware firms sell into Greek shipping — vessel-tracking units, sensor kits, prototype boards and printed proposals going to offices in Piraeus and Athens. Commercial invoice with HS codes is mandatory. Tell us the meeting or trade-fair date and we book against it.
Filter coffee, podis and provisions
The most requested category on every Bengaluru international lane and it survives EU rules intact, provided it is dry and sealed. Filter coffee powder, huli podi, chutney podi, chakli and packaged mixture all clear. Anything with milk solids, ghee or moisture in it does not — that is the whole rule in one sentence.
Island addresses — Crete, Rhodes, Corfu
A real share of this lane ends up off the mainland, at holiday-season addresses and at long-term residences alike. Clearance still happens in Athens; the island hop is a domestic leg afterwards and it adds days rather than hours. Say at booking that the address is on an island so we quote you honestly.
AWB on WhatsApp. Track on dtdc.in. POD when it lands.
The AWB number reaches you on WhatsApp the moment the parcel is booked into DTDC International — at 2 AM if that is when you booked, because the Bengaluru desk does not close. Track it at dtdc.in whenever you like. Expect two quiet stretches on a Greece parcel: the air leg itself, and again while it waits at the European trans-shipment hub for the Athens connection. Neither is a problem. The POD comes to you within the hour of delivery.
Asked most often on this lane.
Can I send my husband's original certificates to the crewing office in Piraeus?
Yes, and it is one of the more common bookings we take on this lane. Send them to the manning agent’s registered office address in Piraeus or central Athens — never to a ship, because a vessel’s berth and schedule will have changed by the time the parcel arrives, and a courier has no way to reach a crew member at sea. Use a rigid document wallet, book express, and declare the contents as personal documents with no commercial value; certificates are not dutiable. Scan and keep a copy of every page before it leaves your hands, and give us the office’s Greek landline as well as a mobile, because agents’ offices keep normal working hours and a signature has to be collected from a person.
Why does Greece take 7–10 days when other European countries are quicker?
Because of where Greece sits on the map, not because of anything Greek customs does. There is rarely a direct connection onto Athens from the Indian gateways, so the parcel is flown to a northern European or Gulf hub and then waits for the onward Greek leg. That handover is worth a working day or two. Athens clearance itself is unremarkable — with an invoice priced line by line and the recipient’s AFM on it, most parcels move through in a day or so. So plan on 7–10 working days for express and 10–15 for economy, and treat the middle of the journey rather than either end as the variable.
The address is in Chania on Crete. Does that change anything?
It changes the timeline, not the price band. Everything inbound clears on the mainland first, and the parcel then travels to the island as a domestic Greek shipment — so add roughly two working days for Crete, and be a little more generous for the smaller Aegean islands where the last leg can depend on a ferry or a small aircraft. Two things make that final stretch smoother: a Greek-format mobile number for the recipient on the invoice, and the five-digit postcode written correctly. Island addresses are often described by area rather than by a numbered street, so a landmark line in the address field genuinely helps the local courier find the door.
Tell us the rough weight and the destination city.
Other countries from Bangalore
A real person at your Bengaluru door, at any hour.
Tap WhatsApp with your pickup details, or call directly. The HSR Layout desk answers 24×7 — international bookings included.