Skip to main content

Delivo, and Forwarding

It's illegal to be happy in India. It's wrong to buy stuff from outside India, while living in India, without also paying the taxwoman her massive cut. And that cut is very vibes-based, which we truly can't fathom the workings of. So we have Delivo, a service provider a LOT of people in the Indian MK space have used to get their purchases here from outside of India, at a reasonable (and more importantly, predictable) price.

Very basically, Delivo has several warehouses across the world, which you can use to deliver your shipments to, and then Delivo will bring them into India. You will pay Delivo an amount determined by the item's weight for this service, and then they will ship it to you within the country. Delivo does have several restrictions around what you can and cannot ship (and what they will ship, but with an added cost), but consult Delivo themselves for more information. Anything keyboard-related (other than batteries) has been just fine though, without extra costs on top of the Delivo rate. It's ideal to read through Delivo's own resources from their WhatsApp group for latest information, and ask in the same groups for specific questions, if you have any.

How to Use Delivo?

The following section will discuss how to use Delivo and what you need to know. All of this should indeed be enough to get you going.

Some pre-requisites you should know of:

  1. Make sure you're in the Delivo WhatsApp group for any latest updates/announcements/stoppages and the like.
  2. Delivo will usually charge you at a rate of 1kg at the minimum. So if you're going to just order some switches, expect to pay a lot of Delivo cost on top. Prefer to combine orders with some other folks who want items from the same site, and order all in one go, to spread out Delivo costs.
  3. Do not take Delivo for an aggregator service, so they will ship every single shipment separately. As a reference, if your items have 2 tracking numbers, you're paying for 2 different packages when they land in Mumbai. Similarly, they won't unbox your items and send them to different places either.
  4. Some warehouses will have a larger minimum shipment weight. Be careful about getting your package shipped to there, because it may take longer or be a little complicated to get items from there if they are under the minimum weight.

The tried-and-true Delivo warehouses have always been US and Hong Kong (HK). Feel free to use them for anything keyboard related and it should be just fine.

Now for the actual process:

  1. Go to bkicks.in. This is Delivo's site for individuals like us trying to work with them. Create an account there with your information and get your addresses for placing your orders to.
  2. At the merchant website, place your order using the address provided to you by Delivo/Bkicks, depending on what warehouse you are using. If you are not sure, and the shipping cost is reasonable, use Hong Kong. HK being a free port will invite no customs charges and is also quite fast to work with. This address will most likely have a first name of "Nirbhay [Your first name, or something sort of close to it]" and a "[warehouse-specific last name]". Make sure you absolutely stick to the address provided, including the first/last names, and then contact number, or there may be issues that are difficult to resolve from across the world.
  3. Now you can track your order getting shipped to the warehouse, this will be provided to you by the merchant of course. Note the Tracking ID provided to you, whatever logistics provider it may be. You can put the order information on to Bkicks website as well, where it is tracked by the Tracking ID once it's delivered to the warehouse. The website is not updated automatically in real-time, so don't worry if you don't see things updated there. If you are looking for more information on where your order is once delivered to the warehouse, ask Delivo on WhatsApp and provide your Tracking ID.
  4. Once it's in Mumbai, you will be typically messaged on WhatsApp, where they will weigh the package for you, and ask for payment for customs clearance. So if your package was 1.5kg, and you ordered it to Delivo Hong Kong @ 1400 INR/kg, you will pay 2100 INR through UPI.
  5. After payment, Delivo ships out the thing for domestic shipping by the next 1-2 days, via Shree Tirupathi Couriers. If you live in a more remote state, they may come back to you and work with you for an alternative arrangement, which will be requiring separate payment. Delhivery works well, as Delhivery will pick up the item from Delivo's address at no added cost.

That's all there is to it. Delivo is highly successful as per the many users of it, and their support is helpful enough if you have any specific questions. Until there are any actually reliable competitors, with user testimony to back them up, the author of this article will strongly, strongly advise you to stick to Delivo. Losing a package entirely without a word of what even caused it is painful, and that has never been an issue with Delivo in many, many instances.