How to export from India to the USA: the process from first registration to payment received

Before the first shipment: IEC, AD code, GST LUT and RCMC

The Importer-Exporter Code (IEC) is a 10-character code issued by DGFT on an online application; no export of goods may be made without one unless the exporter falls in an exempt category, and since GST the IEC is the same as the entity's PAN.^[1] The application is form ANF-2A on dgft.gov.in with a fee and a cancelled cheque or bank certificate plus address proof; the IEC is auto-generated and has permanent validity, but you must confirm or update its details online every year between April and June or it is deactivated.^[2][1]

The AD code is your bank's Authorised Dealer code. On ICEGATE you register the bank through which you will receive export proceeds as a Foreign Remittance Account (Authorized Dealer code), and separately a Refund/Incentive Account for drawback and other incentives; for either, the upload is a bank authorization letter carrying your name and address, IEC, PAN, account number and account name, the bank's confirmation that the PAN on the account matches the PAN on the IEC, the AD code or IFSC and the branch's contact details, plus a cancelled cheque or a bank-endorsed statement.^[11] The shipping bill carries this account, so register it before the first filing.

Under GST an export is a zero-rated supply. To ship without paying IGST you furnish a bond or Letter of Undertaking (LUT) in FORM GST RFD-11 to your jurisdictional Commissioner before export; if the goods do not leave India within three months of the invoice (or the extension the Commissioner allows), the tax falls due with interest fifteen days later.^[9] The alternative is to pay IGST and have the shipping bill treated as the refund claim, covered in the clearance step below.^[10]

The Registration-cum-Membership Certificate (RCMC) comes from the Export Promotion Council for your main line of business, or from FIEO when no council covers the product. You need it to apply for an authorization or any benefit or concession under the Foreign Trade Policy; it runs for five years from April 1 of the licensing year in which it was issued.^[2][1] Documents and order are in IEC, AD code, LUT and RCMC: the exporter's registrations.

Agree terms with your US buyer: Incoterm, payment and who books the freight

The Incoterm decides where your cost and risk stop. Under FOB you deliver on board at Nhava Sheva or Mundra and the buyer's forwarder books the ocean freight; under CIF or CFR you book and pay the freight to the US port; under DAP or DDP you carry the goods to the buyer's door, and under DDP you also carry the US duty. Our Incoterms for Indian exporters guide and the Incoterms explainer set out each rule.

The payment term decides your risk and your paperwork. Advance payment is cleanest. A letter of credit pays against documents that match the credit exactly. Documents against payment or acceptance (D/P, D/A) route the originals through your bank to the buyer's bank. Whatever you agree, the proceeds must reach India within the period set by RBI (see getting paid below), and an exporter whose proceeds stay unrealized beyond one year from the due date (or the extension the bank allowed) must make further exports only against full advance payment or an irrevocable letter of credit.^[7]

Who books the freight follows the Incoterm. On FOB the buyer nominates the forwarder and you hand over at the port; on C and D terms you choose. Airlift's Indian branches arrange factory pickup, container stuffing, carrier bookings and Indian export clearance, and its US company arranges the customs entry through licensed customs brokers and US trucking. Check the India to USA lane guide for what moves the price before you fix a CIF quote.

Quote and booking: what to send, the booking confirmation and the cut-offs

Send the commodity and its HS code, the factory or pickup city, the US destination (port or door), FCL or LCL and the container type, the weight and volume, and the cargo-ready date. The container load calculator tells you whether the order fills a 20-foot or 40-foot box; below roughly a third of a container, read LCL vs FCL from India.

The booking confirmation from the carrier or NVOCC fixes the vessel, the voyage, the empty pickup depot and three dates you must plan around: the shipping instruction (SI) cut-off, the verified gross mass (VGM) cut-off and the gate-in (cargo) cut-off. SOLAS chapter VI regulation 2 has required a verified gross mass for every packed container since July 1, 2016; the shipper is responsible for weighing the packed container, or weighing the contents and adding the container tare, and giving the figure to the carrier and terminal in advance; the VGM is a condition for loading.^[16]

1. Send the enquiry with commodity, HS code, origin, destination, equipment, weight, volume and ready date.
2. Accept the quote and receive the booking confirmation with vessel, cut-offs and empty pickup depot.
3. Send shipping instructions (shipper, consignee, notify party, marks, description, HS code) before the SI cut-off.
4. Submit the VGM before the VGM cut-off and gate the container in before the cargo cut-off.^[16]

Packing, marking and ISPM 15 wood

Mark every package with the buyer's marks, gross and net weight, dimensions, package number and country of origin, and match the marks to the packing list, which the carrier, Indian Customs and the US broker all read against the container.

Every pallet, crate, skid and piece of dunnage entering the United States must be pest-free, debarked, heat-treated or fumigated, and carry the ISPM 15 mark: the IPPC logo, a two-letter country code, the treatment facility's number and HT or MB for the treatment used. Plywood, pressboard, oriented strand board, hardboard, plastic pallets and metal frames are not subject to the rule. A shipment arriving with noncompliant wood is not allowed to enter; the inspector issues an Emergency Action Notification and the options are to safeguard, destroy the wood under supervision or re-export the shipment.^[14] Buy pallets from a treatment provider that stamps the mark. See ISPM 15 for the term and US import rules for Indian exporters for the other agency rules that bite at the US port.

Pickup and container stuffing: factory, CFS or ICD

An FCL export is stuffed in one of three places. Factory stuffing brings the empty container to your plant, where it is loaded under your own supervision or a customs officer's and sealed, then trucked to the port. CFS stuffing trucks the loose cargo to a container freight station near the port, where the CFS stuffs and seals it after customs examination. ICD stuffing does the same at an inland container depot such as Tughlakabad or Ahmedabad, and the sealed container moves to the gateway port by rail. Which fits your plant and commodity is the subject of Factory stuffing, CFS or ICD.

Whichever you choose, record the container seal number, the container number and the stuffing location and date. The stuffing location and the party that stuffed the container are two of the ten data elements the US side must file, so your forwarder will ask for them.^[12] Airlift's Indian branches, including Navi Mumbai near Nhava Sheva and Gandhidham for Mundra and Kandla, arrange the pickup and stuffing; see the port pages for Nhava Sheva, Mundra and Chennai.

Export clearance: the shipping bill on ICEGATE, Let Export Order and departure manifest

Indian export clearance is one electronic document. Under section 50 of the Customs Act, 1962, the exporter enters the goods by presenting a shipping bill electronically on the customs automated system (ICEGATE), declares the truth of its contents, and is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the information, the authenticity of the supporting documents and compliance with any restriction or prohibition on the goods.^[8] The invoice, packing list and any certificate are uploaded as supporting documents; the GST, RoDTEP and drawback declarations ride on the same bill.

Customs then assesses the bill, examines the cargo if the system selects it, and under section 51 the proper officer makes an order permitting clearance and loading of the goods for exportation; the order may be made electronically on risk evaluation.^[8] That order is the Let Export Order (LEO). Section 40 bars the vessel's person-in-charge from loading export goods unless a shipping bill duly passed by the proper officer has been handed over.^[8]

Before the vessel departs the customs station, the carrier delivers the departure manifest (the successor of the Export General Manifest, EGM) electronically under section 41, listing every shipping bill on board.^[8] That filing closes your export in the customs system and starts your refunds: under rule 96 of the CGST Rules the shipping bill is deemed to be the application for refund of IGST paid on the goods only once the departure or export manifest covering it has been filed and your GSTR-3B is in, and the refund is credited to the bank account in your GST registration as intimated to Customs.^[10] Field by field, see The shipping bill on ICEGATE. Exporters commonly file through a licensed customs house agent; Airlift's Indian branches arrange the export clearance, including the shipping bill filed on ICEGATE.

Bill of lading, telex release and the documents the buyer needs

Once the container is on board, the carrier issues the master bill of lading to the NVOCC or forwarder, and the NVOCC issues you its house bill of lading. Airlift issues its own house bill of lading. Check every field against the shipping bill and the invoice before release: under a letter of credit a mismatch is a discrepancy, and the US broker files the entry from the same data.

Hold the original bills and courier them to the buyer or the bank until you are paid (the norm under D/P), or ask for a telex release, where you surrender the originals at origin and the carrier releases the cargo at destination without paper. For an advance-paid buyer a telex release avoids a courier that arrives after the vessel.

The Foreign Trade Policy names three mandatory export documents: the transport document (bill of lading, airway bill, lorry receipt, railway receipt or postal receipt), the commercial invoice cum packing list, and the shipping bill.^[1] The buyer's broker also wants a certificate of origin where asked, any FDA or phytosanitary certificate the commodity needs, and the ISF data in the next step. The complete set, who issues each and when, is in the export documents checklist.

What the US side needs from you: ISF, HTS code, FDA and APHIS

The US entry is your buyer's job, but three of its inputs come from you. The Importer Security Filing (ISF, "10+2") must be filed for cargo arriving by vessel^[13] by the ISF Importer, which is the goods' owner, purchaser, consignee or an agent such as a licensed customs broker, or for cargo staying on board, the carrier or NVOCC. Eight elements are due no later than 24 hours before the cargo is laden aboard the vessel at the foreign port: seller, buyer, importer of record number, consignee number, manufacturer or supplier, ship-to party, country of origin and the HTS number to six digits. The container stuffing location and the consolidator (stuffer) may follow, but no later than 24 hours before arrival at a US port.^[12] On shipments Airlift carries, Airlift files the ISF as the NVOCC; the seller, manufacturer, stuffing location and HS code are yours to supply before the SI cut-off.

The HTS code is the US classification of your goods. Your buyer's broker owns it, but you should know it, because the duty hangs on it: look it up in the HTS code finder, see what Indian goods pay in US tariffs on India and run the landed cost in the tariff simulator.

Food, including animal feed, needs FDA prior notice: for food arriving by water the notice must reach FDA no less than 8 hours before the vessel arrives at the port of arrival.^[15] Drugs, cosmetics, medical devices and food facilities have their own FDA registration and listing rules. Plant products and wood need APHIS clearance and, where required, a phytosanitary certificate from India's plant quarantine authority. Agency by agency, see US import rules for Indian exporters.

Getting paid and closing the file: EDPMS, e-BRC and the FEMA realization period

From October 1, 2026 the Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Goods and Services) Regulations, 2026 apply. You declare the full export value in the Export Declaration Form (EDF); at an EDI port the EDF is treated as submitted with the shipping bill, so the customs data flows to your bank's Export Data Processing and Monitoring System (EDPMS) entry without a separate filing.^[7]

The full export value must be realized and repatriated within nine months from the date of shipment, or twelve months where the export is invoiced or settled in Indian rupees. Your Authorised Dealer bank may extend the period on a request that gives reasons it is satisfied with. When the bank credits your account it closes or updates the EDPMS entry; for a shipping bill up to ₹10 lakh the entry may be closed on your own declaration that payment has been realized, and such declarations can be submitted quarterly in bulk.^[7] Give the bank the shipping bill reference with each remittance so it can be matched.

The proof of payment for DGFT and GST purposes is the electronic Bank Realisation Certificate (e-BRC). Banks transmit Inward Remittance Messages (IRMs) directly to DGFT, and you self-certify an e-BRC against one or more remittances on the DGFT portal, following Trade Notice 33/2023-24 of November 10, 2023; the portal's IRM utilization report ties each remittance to the shipping bills and invoices it paid.^[6] Generate it as soon as the money lands: RoDTEP provides for recovery of the rebate where foreign exchange is not realized.^[3]

Incentives after export: RoDTEP, duty drawback and the IGST refund

Three remissions can come back after the goods leave. RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products) refunds central, state and local duties and taxes embedded in the exported product that no other scheme refunds. It is paid at a notified rate as a percentage of FOB value, with a value cap per unit where set, by 8-digit HS code in Appendix 4R (4RE for Advance Authorisation, EOU and SEZ exports), as a transferable e-scrip in an electronic ledger maintained by CBIC, under the claim procedure CBIC notifies.^[3] As of October 15, 2026 the scheme runs up to December 31, 2026: Notification No. 41/2026-27 of September 30, 2026 continued it for exports by DTA units, Advance Authorisation holders, SEZ units and EOUs, with the Appendix 4R and 4RE rates and value caps as applicable on September 30, 2026 unchanged.^[5] The schedule was last aligned to the Customs Tariff changes with effect from May 1, 2026 (Notification No. 15/2026-27 of April 30, 2026).^[4] Both the validity and the rates move by DGFT notification, so read the current Appendix 4R on the DGFT RoDTEP page before you price a benefit in.

Duty drawback under section 75 of the Customs Act refunds customs duty paid on imported materials used in making the exported goods, once the section 51 order permitting clearance and loading has been made, at the rate determined and fixed by the Customs authority under the Department of Revenue's drawback rules.^[8][3] The IGST refund is either the refund of unutilized input tax credit on exports under LUT or, where you paid IGST, the refund of that tax through the shipping bill under rule 96.^[9][10] Rates and timelines are in RoDTEP, duty drawback and the IGST refund; whether your product qualifies is a question for your CHA and chartered accountant.

The export timeline: step, who does it, when, and the document it produces

Dates are relative to the vessel's estimated time of departure (ETD) from the Indian port. Cut-offs in the booking rows come from your carrier's booking confirmation and differ by carrier and terminal; the ISF, departure manifest, FDA and realization rows are legal deadlines.