indian consumers bitten by the online shopping bug are increasingly looking beyond the borders to get the best shopping deals this holidaydiscount season are you also looking to shop at foreign stores heres what you need to know to make for a happy experience doorstep delivery while there are many international retailers that deliver to india some usbased websites only ship to addresses within the country in such cases you can opt for a package forwarding service like bongo or shipito to collect the items locally on your behalf and deliver them to your home for a fee among the portals that do deliver overseas only a handful offer to ship the goods at no extra cost most levy additional shipping charges for delivering the goods to india businesses such as ukbased asos and chinabased aliexpress part of the alibaba groupoffer free shipping to india for certain items but their delivery timeline is a concern if you are willing to pay for shipping the choice of retailers is wider and you can be reasonably assured about getting the product in good time global platforms of popular online retailers amazon and ebay offer tons of products that can be shipped to india and buyers can track their shipments easily apart from these there are a host of brands selling their wares to overseas buyersmacys harrods toysrus additional charges besides shipping buyers will also have to shell out customs duty on the items purchased online the import duty depends on the particular item laptops sports equipment and computer peripherals for instance attract a duty of around 147 toys games apparel cosmetics food supplements and other electronics items are charged 288 duty it must also be noted that calculation of the import duty is done based on the assessed value of the imported item and not its invoice value so even if the invoice price of the sports equipment you bought online after a discount is 300 the customs official may assess its value at say 350 in which case you will have to pay the 147 duty on 350 and not 300 popular portals like amazon and ebay global easybuy estimate the applicable import fees during checkout and also provide customs clearance on your behalf since indian customs authorities do not release a shipment without a valid identification of the recipient you will be asked to furnish a valid id number aadhaar card pan card driving license or voter id at the time of checkout itself payment buyers will get the final value of the item after shipping costs and import duty at the time of checkout in some cases the combined cost of shipping and duties may turn out to be higher than the product itself any saving through discount may get wiped out by shipping costs and duties for instance you might see a gadget priced much cheaper even in rupee terms than what is available locally but the cost is likely to shoot up much higher after considering all