A Case Study

Jaspreet Singh’s experience of moving to India

I relocated from London to Mumbai in early 2007. At the time, I was four years into a private consulting job based in London and one of my clients required someone with my skills to be based in India for an 18-month contract. I work in business intelligence for the maritime industry, specifically around shipping and offshore operations.

Once I had signed on the dotted line, I had three months until I started work in Mumbai. The company organised a container to ship my household goods, and paid for a week-long return trip in December 2006 so my wife and I could sort out a flat, meet some of the people I would be working with and get to know the area.

The process was a lot easier than we had imagined. Having heard quite a few tales of missing baggage and containers being stuck in customs for months, we had been prepared for the worst!

My company has a contract with DHL to manage all such work. They in turn organised the packers, movers, shipping to port London, getting it cleared outbound for customs, shipping to port Mumbai, getting inbound customs and tax cleared, and delivery to our flat. There were various organisations involved, but we only had to speak with the DHL person in Mumbai. End to end the process took 38 days, from the date the packers came down to our place in Hammersmith to the date we moved into our flat in Mumbai.

The only issue we had was with our car. I decided at the time to ship my car over from the UK, since I had only had it for a year. Before we moved, it was never quite clear how much and what sort of tax and customs we might be charged for importing it. Because neither of us has an Indian passport, it was impossible for us to qualify in the 'return to India' bracket,and we were also not eligible for a 'transfer of residence' as I am on an 18 month contract with a finite termination date.

We ended up paying 75% of the car's value, and it took almost two months to sort out all the paperwork before customs would release it. On the flip side, petrol in India is a lot cheaper than the UK, but in retrospect it would have been cheaper and much more functional to have sold the car, taken the hit on price, and just bought a new one here.

© 2007 of Re:locate magazine, published by Profile Locations, Spray Hill, Hastings Road, Lamberhurst, Kent TN3 8JB. All rights reserved. This publication (or any part thereof) may not be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of Profile Locations. Profile Locations accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein.