We guys at our company decided to import a piece of hardware to understand, learn and generally play around with. The decision to import was made when all vendors in India told us that they dont have it with them. Anyways, once the decision was made we were made to understand the procedure in making some imports.
a) First one should apply for an import/export code at DGFT, Kendriya Sadan, Koramangala. This would take a couple of days (dont know how much time it would actually take, cause we dont have the IE code yet).
b) Then we need to get a profarma invoice from the US vendor and release a formal purchase order from our side. We will need to take both of these documents and show it to our bank so that they authorize an international wire transfer.
c) Next we take the bank’s authorization and get to the Foreign Exchange branch of our bank and initiate the wire transfer. Again to this FE Branch, we should show like 4-5 documents and explain our purpose/intent behind the import.
d) The US vendor will then get the money. They will then despatch the hardware to India by Air Cargo. Then this will land up at the customs office in Bangalore sometime next month.
e) We will then have to take all the documents generated between a and d and show it to the customs officials, pay the customs duties and get the hardware.
Provided there is no bribe and harrassment involved in all this process, we can hope to get our stuff in about a month’s time. Otherwise it may take a couple of months. So far we have not been asked for bribe from any government official, they have all been very kind and very helpful so far. But you never know. Like they say, there is a first time to everything.