International courier from Bangalore to Germany. Free home pickup.
Picked up from your Bengaluru address at any hour, packed and declared, then flown out of Kempegowda on the DTDC International network — the parcel is never trucked to Mumbai or Delhi to catch its flight. Express runs 5–7 working days door to door, at ₹1,300 a kilogram upward before the fuel surcharge and GST.
Five steps from your Bengaluru door to a German address.
Pickup, Bengaluru.
Free at 5 kg+, at whatever hour suits you — the HSR Layout desk is staffed round the clock, which matters on this lane because a Bosch or Mercedes-Benz R&D shift in Adugodi or Whitefield rarely ends before a normal courier counter shuts. We arrive with tape, bubble wrap and the international airway bill.
Declare it properly.
This is the step that decides your transit time to Germany. Every line on the invoice gets a plain-language description, a quantity, a value and an HS code where the shipment is commercial. Recipient EORI for a business consignee, Steuer-ID or full name and phone for a private one. Nothing on the paperwork says "gift items" or "samples".
BLR gateway.
Into the DTDC International facility and out through Kempegowda, which handles its own international departures. A parcel booked from an inland origin has to be trucked or railed to a coastal gateway first and can lose a day or two before it flies; from Bengaluru the air leg starts here.
Zoll at the EU border.
Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Cologne or Leipzig depending on routing. Germany is the point at which your parcel enters the entire EU customs territory, so this single clearance is the only one it faces. Zoll is quick with precise paperwork — often inside 24 to 48 hours — and stubborn with vague paperwork.
Doorstep delivery.
Last mile with DHL or DPD. German carriers deliver to a named person at a named door, so the recipient's surname has to be on the Klingelschild — the doorbell and letterbox nameplate — or the parcel goes to a Packstation or Paketshop instead. POD reaches you on WhatsApp the day it lands.
Starting rates. What you actually pay depends on weight.
We bill on actual or volumetric weight, whichever comes out higher, and add the international fuel surcharge applying on the day you book. GST sits on top of that. German import VAT and any duty are entirely separate and are paid at the other end by the person receiving the parcel.
Starting per-kg rates
- Express (5–7 days, door)from ₹1,300 / kg
- Economy (8–12 days, door)from ₹950 / 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 sealed pack of filter coffee powder going to a family in Stuttgart, about 30 × 25 × 15 cm:
- Express, 2 kg × ₹1,300≈ ₹2,600
- + fuel surcharge (~25%)≈ ₹650
- + GST 18%≈ ₹585
- Approx total, express≈ ₹3,835
Indicative figures. Surcharges and rate cards move. German VAT and duty, if any, reach the recipient as a separate bill.
What you’ll need at pickup.
Germany sits inside a single European customs union, so one clearance covers the whole bloc — but Germany is also the member state least tolerant of a loosely written declaration. Precision at pickup is what buys you the fast end of the transit band.
KYC of the sender
One photo ID for the person named as sender on the airway bill — Aadhaar, passport or driving licence all work. Our rider photographs it at your door and it goes no further than DTDC's booking record.
Invoice, written the way Zoll reads it
Item-level descriptions in plain words, quantity, unit value and HS code. A German business consignee must give you an EORI number; a private recipient should give a Steuer-ID or at minimum a full name and mobile. Duty relief applies below €150 of goods value and gift relief between private individuals below €45, but import VAT is charged on commercial goods at any value — so an honest number helps your recipient more than a low one.
Prescription, for medicines
Sealed strips only, with a scanned prescription showing the prescribing doctor's registration number and a one-line statement of what it treats. Germany's BfArM rules exclude controlled substances outright, and no liquids or injectables move on a courier network regardless of destination.
What Germany doesn’t let in.
Part of this list is EU-wide and part is specifically German. Either way it is enforced by Zoll rather than invented by us, and a parcel sent against it is destroyed or returned with the disposal cost charged to your recipient. These are the ones Bengaluru senders get wrong most often.
Don’t even try
- Any dairy or meat, in any form — the EU bars personal consignments of milk and meat products from outside the bloc, and factory sealing makes no difference. Mysore pak, dharwad pedha, ghee, milk peda and khoa-based sweets all fall on the wrong side of this.
- Seeds, fresh produce and untreated plant material — EU plant-health rules require a phytosanitary certificate that a courier parcel cannot carry. Curry leaves, fresh coconut and packets of seeds are refused.
- Anything carrying Nazi iconography — Germany's Volksverhetzung provisions cover foreign-published books, posters, flags and memorabilia. This catches people who never intended it, usually via a historical book or a collectible.
- Blades and weapon replicas — the Waffengesetz is read literally. Decorative swords, kirpans, letter-opener daggers and airsoft replicas are all flagged.
- Counterfeit or brand-lookalike goods — German consumer-protection enforcement is among the EU's hardest, and unbranded goods in branded-style packaging are treated the same way.
- CBD and hemp preparations — assume blocked at parcel level whatever the product label claims.
- Aerosols, perfumes, loose lithium cells above 100 Wh — an air-safety rule rather than a German one. It bites Bengaluru parcels more than most, because so many of them contain electronics.
Allowed with care
- Filter coffee powder and dry podis — roasted, ground, commercially sealed, ingredients printed on the pack. Declared as "roasted coffee powder" it moves without argument.
- Silk sarees and stitched garments — Kanjeevaram, Mysore silk, handloom cotton, lehengas. State the fibre and a fair value; textile descriptions on the invoice should say what the cloth actually is.
- Sealed dry snacks — chakli, mixture, banana chips, factory-packed with an ingredient list. Allergen labelling is taken seriously in Germany, so a legible ingredients panel genuinely helps.
- Sandalwood soap and sandalwood powder — fine as manufactured goods. Sandalwood oil is a liquid and will not fly.
- Machine parts and hardware samples — the staple B2B item on this lane. Correct HS code, correct material, correct value, and the buyer's EORI on the invoice.
- Books, transcripts and printed documents — straightforward, provided the subject matter avoids the iconography rule above.
Engineers, students, and the machine-parts corridor.
Germany is home to the largest Indian professional population in the European Union, and a disproportionate share of it came through Bengaluru. That shows up in what this lane actually carries.
Blue Card families in Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt
The steadiest traffic on the route. Engineers and developers who moved on an EU Blue Card, and parents in Jayanagar, Rajajinagar or Basavanagudi sending what a German supermarket does not stock — coffee powder, podis, festival clothing, a child's school certificates. Give us the recipient's surname exactly as it appears on their letterbox.
Parents shipping to students
Germany's public universities charge no tuition, and Indian enrolment reflects it — TU Munich, RWTH Aachen, KIT Karlsruhe, TU Berlin, Darmstadt. Bedding, pressure cookers, sealed dry food and winter layers, mostly in September and March. Student residences need the room or Zimmer number on the address line.
Automotive and machine-tool B2B
Bengaluru's engineering base — Bosch at Adugodi, Mercedes-Benz R&D in Whitefield, the machine-tool cluster around Peenya — runs a genuine two-way parts corridor with Stuttgart, Munich and the Ruhr. Prototype components, gauges, fixtures and test samples. Commercial invoice with HS codes, buyer's EORI, every time.
Hardware and software company samples
Product samples, dev boards, packaging mockups and demo units from Koramangala, HSR Layout and Electronic City going to German distributors, trade fairs and pilot customers. Tell us the fair date — Hannover Messe, Bauma, Medica — and we book express against it rather than against a vague week.
Wedding and festival clothing
Silk sarees, lehengas and sherwanis sent ahead of weddings in the German-Indian community, and blouse pieces going back and forth for stitching. Always express, always well ahead, because a Zoll clarification query on a rushed parcel is the version of this lane nobody wants.
Documents and academic records
Degree certificates and transcripts for university admission and for Anabin or ZAB recognition, apostilled papers, signed contracts, notarised translations. Tracked express with a stated deadline so we can route it to the fastest gateway for that postcode.
AWB on WhatsApp. Track on dtdc.in. POD when it lands.
You get the AWB number on WhatsApp the moment the parcel is booked into DTDC International — including in the small hours, because the Bengaluru desk does not close. Track it at dtdc.in. Expect two silent stretches: the air leg, where nothing scans until the parcel reaches the German gateway, and the Zoll hold itself. Neither is a lost parcel. Once DHL or DPD delivers, the POD comes back to you inside the hour.
The three that come up on every German booking.
My brother's German address has no nameplate yet. Will the parcel still be delivered?
Probably not to his door, and this catches almost every recently relocated Bengaluru family. German last-mile carriers match the surname on the label to the surname on the Klingelschild — the nameplate beside the doorbell and on the letterbox — and if there is no match the courier will not leave the parcel in the building. What normally happens is a redirection to the nearest DHL Packstation or Paketshop and a card in the letterbox, which is recoverable but adds days. Two things fix it in advance: have him put his name on the letterbox before the parcel arrives, and give us his German mobile number so the carrier can reach him. If he lives in a shared flat, put the name that is actually on the plate on the address line, with his own name underneath as c/o.
I'm sending machine parts to a German company. What does the invoice actually need?
More detail than most senders expect, because Zoll checks the description against the HS code and the value against what that part plausibly costs. For each line: what the part is in plain words, what it is made of, how many, unit value, total value, and the correct eight-digit HS heading. The German consignee must supply an EORI number — Germany cross-checks it against the EU registry, and a B2B consignment without one gets reclassified as a personal import with duty recalculated and the parcel parked while somebody sorts it out. If the part is destined for aerospace, defence or anything with a dual-use character, tell us before pickup so we can check whether it moves on a courier network at all. On a clean invoice with a valid EORI, Frankfurt or Munich usually clears the shipment within a working day or two.
Who pays German customs charges — me or my family there?
Your recipient, always. Import VAT and any duty are assessed in Germany and collected from the consignee, normally by DHL or DPD before or at delivery, plus a small handling fee. You cannot prepay it from India on this service. What you can do is make it small and predictable: declare an honest value, mark a genuine present between private individuals as a gift, and keep the parcel to one consignment rather than splitting it. Gift consignments between private individuals attract relief below €45, and goods below €150 escape duty though not VAT. Under-declaring to dodge the charge is the false economy on this route — Zoll compares your stated value against what the goods are visibly worth, and a challenged declaration costs your recipient several days and often more money than the honest figure would have.
Tell us the rough weight and the destination postcode.
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A real person at your Bengaluru door, whatever the hour.
Send us the pickup address on WhatsApp or call. The HSR Layout desk runs 24×7, and we will tell you what Germany needs on the declaration before we pack the box.