International courier from Bangalore to Egypt. Free home pickup.
Collected from your Bengaluru door at any hour, packed and documented, and flown out of Kempegowda on the DTDC International network to the Cairo gateway. 6–10 working days door-to-door on express, from ₹1,200 per kilogram before fuel surcharge and GST. Most of that band is clearance, not flying — Egyptian customs is thorough and unhurried, and we price and plan for that honestly.
Five steps from your Bengaluru door to an Egyptian address.
Pickup, Bengaluru.
Free at 5 kg+, at any hour — Peenya and Bommanahalli factory pickups as readily as a house in Jayanagar. The HSR Layout desk runs 24×7 and the agent packs at your address with tape, bubble wrap and the international airway bill.
Invoice built properly.
This is the step that decides an Egypt shipment. Item-level commercial invoice with HS codes, fabric composition where it is textile, quantities, unit values and a total that a customs officer can reconcile. We draft the first one with you if you have not shipped this lane before.
BLR gateway.
Handover into the DTDC International facility and out through Kempegowda toward Cairo, usually with a Gulf trans-shipment. Bengaluru flies its own international freight, so unlike an inland origin the parcel does not lose a day or two on a truck before it starts moving.
Egyptian customs.
Clearance through the Egyptian Customs Authority at Cairo. Be ready for this to take three to seven days on a clean parcel, and longer around Ramadan and national holidays. It is a documentation-heavy regime by design; it is not a comment on your consignment. We chase status daily rather than waiting for the tracker.
Doorstep delivery.
Last mile in Cairo, New Cairo, Giza, 6th of October City, Alexandria, Port Said or Suez. Give us a mobile number that works locally — Egyptian last-mile delivery is phone-led and an address alone often is not enough. POD on WhatsApp the same day.
Starting rates. Real pricing depends on weight.
Egypt prices above the Gulf even though it is not much further, because the routing carries a trans-shipment leg and the clearance cycle ties up handling for days rather than hours. The billed figure follows whichever is higher, actual or volumetric weight, plus the fuel surcharge running on your booking date. GST is extra.
Starting per-kg rates
- Express (6–10 days, door)from ₹1,200 / kg
- Economy (10–15 days, door)from ₹900 / kg
- Min billable weight0.5 kg
- Pickup from BengaluruFree at 5 kg+
Volumetric formula: (L × W × H cm) ÷ 5000.
Worked example
A 4 kg parcel — say a set of garment samples and a swatch book from a Peenya unit going to a buying agent in Cairo, about 45 × 35 × 25 cm:
- Express, 4 kg × ₹1,200≈ ₹4,800
- + fuel surcharge (~25%)≈ ₹1,200
- + GST 18%≈ ₹1,080
- Approx total, express≈ ₹7,080
Indicative only. Check volumetric weight on a bulky sample carton — it often bills heavier than it weighs.
What you’ll need at pickup.
Egypt is the most paperwork-hungry destination in this region, and the paperwork is checked rather than filed. A parcel that goes in complete moves at the regime's own pace; a parcel that goes in short waits for correspondence to cross two time zones. We build the file at your address before the agent leaves.
KYC of the sender
Photo ID for the sender named on the AWB: Aadhaar, passport or driving licence, whichever is to hand. Captured at pickup and kept only in DTDC's booking record. Exporters shipping regularly should also give us their IEC and GSTIN once, and we keep them on file.
Commercial invoice with HS codes
Item descriptions, quantities, unit values, HS codes and country of origin. For garments and fabric, state the composition and whether the pieces are samples — sample marking matters to how they are treated. Egyptian customs is value-focused and cross-checks declared values against what the goods plainly are, so a fair number costs you less trouble than a low one.
Consignee identity and a live mobile
The recipient's Egyptian national ID number for a personal parcel, or the company's tax registration for a commercial one, plus a mobile the clearing agent can actually reach. Clearance correspondence in Egypt goes to the consignee, and a parcel addressed to someone who cannot be phoned is a parcel that waits.
What Egypt doesn’t let in.
Egypt is more relaxed about ordinary life than the Gulf states — alcohol is sold, food is unrestricted, and there is no religious screening of a family's belongings. What it is strict about is heritage, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals, and those three catch out Bengaluru senders in ways that Gulf rules never do.
Don’t even try
- Drones, radio transmitters, walkie-talkies, satellite receivers and mesh networking kit — telecom and broadcast equipment requires Egyptian regulatory approval before it can be imported, and a courier consignment is not the route to obtain it. A Bengaluru hardware startup sending a connected prototype should talk to us before packing, not after.
- Unregistered pharmaceuticals as commercial samples — drug products need Egyptian Drug Authority registration to be imported commercially. A relative's prescription course is a different case and is covered below; a box of trade samples from a Bommasandra unit is not, and will be seized.
- Antiquities, and replicas that look like antiquities — Egypt polices cultural heritage seriously in both directions. Aged-brass ornaments, distressed metalwork and museum-style reproductions can trigger a review even when they are obviously modern. If you must send decorative brass, send it looking new and invoice it as new.
- Alcohol — sold openly in Egypt, still zero-tolerance in a courier consignment.
- Pork and pork derivatives — restricted in courier traffic.
- E-cigarettes, vape devices and liquids — import banned.
- Narcotics, cannabis and CBD in any form — banned outright, with serious penalties.
- Aerosols, all liquids, and lithium cells above 100 Wh — standard air-leg rules. Sandalwood oil and attars fall here; the soap and the powder do not.
Allowed with care
- Garment and fabric samples — the backbone of this lane out of Bengaluru. Invoice with composition and HS codes, mark them as samples, value them realistically. Slashing or defacing sample garments is common practice elsewhere but is not required here and damages their usefulness — declare them properly instead.
- Silk sarees and made-up garments — Kanjeevaram, Mysore silk, cottons. Fair value, clear description.
- Engineering spares and machine parts — part numbers, serials, HS codes and a stated purpose. There is real Indian industrial presence around Cairo, Suez and Ain Sokhna and these move routinely.
- Prescription medicines for a named person — sealed strips, a copy of the prescription with the doctor's registration number, quantities that read as one person's course, and a line stating the condition. Personal quantity with paperwork is workable.
- Sealed dry food — filter coffee, packaged snacks, spice packets with printed ingredients and shelf life. Nothing homemade, nothing wet.
- Books, catalogues and printed matter — straightforward; declare titles and values.
- Documents and attestations — the fastest and cleanest category on this lane.
Garment samples, machine parts, and a trade relationship that is actually growing.
This is not a diaspora lane in the way South Africa or Mauritius are. India–Egypt trade has been building steadily, and what moves between Bengaluru and Cairo is mostly commercial: samples going out to buyers, spares going out to projects, documents going out ahead of both. The family traffic exists but it rides on top of the business.
Apparel and textile sampling
Bengaluru is India's largest garment-manufacturing cluster and Egypt is a serious textile market with its own long cotton tradition — which means the traffic is samples and counter-samples rather than bulk. Units in Peenya, Mysore Road, Bommanahalli and Hosur Road send fit samples, swatch cards and pre-production pieces to Cairo and Alexandria buying agents. Get the composition on the invoice and this lane is uneventful.
Engineering and machine spares
Indian industrial presence around Greater Cairo, Suez and the Ain Sokhna corridor generates a steady demand for parts that cannot wait for a container. Bearings, seals, control boards, tooling. Part number and serial on the invoice, HS code against each line, and a note saying what machine it belongs to — that last detail resolves more customs queries than anything else.
Pharma and life-science paperwork
The Bommasandra and Jigani biotech belt deals with Egyptian distributors and regulators, and what travels is documentation rather than product: dossiers, certificates of analysis, signed agreements, apostilled corporate papers. Actual drug samples need Egyptian registration and are a different conversation — ask us first.
IT hardware and demo units
Bengaluru software firms selling into Egyptian banks, telecoms and government projects send demonstration hardware and installation kit ahead of meetings. The caution is specific and important: anything that transmits — a drone, a radio module, a wireless base station — needs Egyptian approval and cannot simply be couriered in. Ordinary laptops and peripherals declared with serials are fine.
Family parcels to Cairo and Alexandria
Indian professionals posted to Egypt, and the small long-settled Indian community in Cairo and Alexandria. Clothing, sealed dry provisions, filter coffee, children's books, festival wear. Nothing complicated, but the same document discipline applies — a personal parcel is not exempt from the invoice.
Documents and attestations
Employment contracts, degree certificates for verification, embassy-attested corporate papers, tender submissions. Always express, always tracked. On a lane where the clearance cycle is measured in days, documents are the one category that reliably moves at the fast end of the band.
AWB on WhatsApp. Track on dtdc.in. POD when it lands.
The AWB reaches you on WhatsApp the moment the parcel is booked into DTDC International, at whatever hour that happens, and you can check it at dtdc.in. On this lane expect the tracker to sit still for three to seven days while the parcel is in clearance at Cairo. That is the Egyptian Customs Authority working through its file, not a lost parcel, and it is exactly why the express band is quoted at 6–10 days rather than something prettier. We ask for status daily during that window and pass on whatever we are told, including when the answer is that it is still queued.
Asked most often on this lane.
We're a Bengaluru garment unit sending fit samples to a Cairo buying agent. What does the paperwork actually need to say?
More than most people put on it. Each line needs a real description — 'men's woven shirt, 100% cotton, size L, 3 pieces' rather than 'garments' — with an HS code, a unit value and a total. Add the fabric composition, because textile classification in Egypt turns on it, and mark the consignment as samples so it is assessed as what it is. Put the buying agent's company name, tax registration number and a working Egyptian mobile on the AWB, because clearance correspondence goes to the consignee and an unreachable consignee is the commonest cause of a stalled sample box. Two things not to do: do not undervalue the samples to save duty, because Egyptian customs assesses value against the goods and a mismatch buys you an inspection; and do not mutilate the samples, which some exporters do out of habit — it is not required here and it makes the samples useless to the buyer.
Why does Egypt take longer than the Gulf when it isn't much further away?
Because almost none of the extra time is flying time. Three things stack up. The routing usually carries a trans-shipment through a Gulf hub rather than running as one clean sector. The Egyptian Customs Authority is a documentation-heavy regime that works through a file rather than waving parcels past, and three to seven days on a clean consignment is normal there in a way it is not in Manama or Muscat. And the working week is different — Egypt runs Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday off, so an Indian week and an Egyptian one only overlap for four days, and a parcel landing on a Thursday evening has effectively lost the weekend. Add Ramadan, when government working hours are shortened for the month and Eid al-Fitr follows immediately, and the sensible plan for anything dated is to book two to three weeks ahead.
Can I send medicines to my relative in Cairo, and can our company send pharma samples?
Those are two completely different questions and they have different answers. A named person's prescription medicine, in sealed strips, in a quantity that looks like one course of treatment, with a copy of the prescription showing the doctor's registration number and a line stating what it treats, is workable — it goes in as a personal-use item and is usually accepted. Commercial pharmaceutical samples are not. Drug products need registration with the Egyptian Drug Authority before they can be imported for commercial purposes, and a carton of unregistered samples from a Bengaluru manufacturer will be seized regardless of how good the invoice is. If you are at the stage of sending product to an Egyptian distributor, talk to us before you pack and we will tell you what the shipment actually needs — which may be a different mode entirely.
Tell us the rough weight and the destination city.
Sending your request…
Hang on, this takes a couple of seconds.
Thanks! We’ll call you shortly.
Your booking request has been received. For urgent support, reach us directly:
Couldn’t send your request
Please try again, or reach us directly — we’re here 24×7:
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.