Best way to reliably get documents from US to India?

Hi,

I need to get documents from the US to India on a regular'ish basis. Primarily from California to Chennai and Mumbai. Is there a courier service to be able to get this, which is not Fed Ex/DHL, who all are really expensive? I'm hoping for something in the range of ~$10-15 per 250 gms.

How fast do you need them and how important are the documents (=if they got lost, would it be a nuisance or a disaster?). Fast + ultra-reliable=expensive. No free lunches on offer. Else you could use regular (registered) airmail, from Europe it takes about one week but everything depends on where you live and your postman. I have no problems, a colleague of mine who lives 5 km away cannot have anything sent to him because half the time it doesn't reach him, despite regular complaints at the local post office.

I know this is not the answer you are looking for, but if the documents are important, I would suggest FedEx. Not even USPS or DHL.

If you want reliability + speed the big three UPS/DHL/Fedex win hands down.

Best way to send documents is to contact third party companies, who buy postage slots from DHL/Fedex in bulk and send through them. They generally offer rates about 20-50% less than quoted by DHL/FEdex directly. You canthink them as agents of DHL/Fedex offering discounts.

I've used this model both in the UK and India (UK to other countries and India to UK)- and this is kind of standard thing in most of the countries.

I found DTDC to be very good while sending documents from India to US - cheap and reliable - they are the biggest courier company in India. But, I don't know the flow in reverse - might be a good idea to call them for quotes.