Work backwards from the festival, not forwards from today. Almost everyone plans forwards — “we should start thinking about Diwali gifts” — which produces a start date rather than a deadline, and a start date has no relationship to whether anything arrives on time.
The backwards calculation
| Working back from the festival | Allow |
|---|---|
| Delivery, at peak season | 4–6 days |
| Print, bind and weekly Monday dispatch | up to 9 days |
| Design and your proof approval | Two to four days |
| Collecting addresses | 1–3 weeks |
| Collecting content, if colleagues contribute | 1–2 weeks |
| Internal approval and the PO | 3 days–3 weeks |
Six weeks before the festival is a comfortable order date for a bulk personalised gift where addresses are already known. Eight weeks if you also need vendor onboarding or a purchase order raised.
That sounds early. It is roughly late September for a late-October Diwali, and the reason it feels early is that the two longest stages are invisible work nobody schedules.
The two stages that always run late
Addresses. Ask for them three weeks before you intend to order, in one place, in one format. Someone will not reply, and two people will send an old address. Ask for a phone number alongside — couriers in India call rather than buzz.
Content. If colleagues are contributing a photograph or a line each, set the deadline a week before you plan to order and expect two people to miss it. Ask for one specific thing rather than “write something nice”, or you get thirty variations of the same sentence.
Neither of these is a printing problem, and neither can be compressed by paying more.
Why the delivery window widens at Diwali
Our normal range is 5 to 14 days from order to doorstep, 5 to 12 to Delhi NCR, flat ₹70 per address. We dispatch once a week, on Mondays — order by a Friday and you catch that week’s dispatch; order at the weekend and you wait for the next.
In the festival fortnight, courier networks across India carry their yearly peak. Plan against the upper end of that range rather than the middle, and add a day or two for remote pin codes.
The one decision that saves a week for nothing
Order on a Thursday or Friday.
An order placed on a Friday makes the coming Monday’s dispatch. The same order on a Saturday waits for the Monday after. Same money, same product, seven days apart — and in a compressed Diwali schedule that is frequently the difference between arriving before the festival and after it.
What to do if you are already late
Said plainly, because most people reading this in October are.
Cut the personalisation, not the gift. A print set at ₹270 with no per-person variation moves faster than a book with a varied page each, because there is no collection stage.
Ship to one office rather than fifty homes. It removes the address-collection stage entirely, at the cost of the people who work remotely.
Or move the occasion. A gift in the second week of November, framed as a year-end thank you rather than a Diwali gift, arrives when nothing else is arriving and is remembered better. This is a genuinely good outcome rather than a consolation.
Year-end team gifts for a startup →
The procurement stage, if you have one
Larger companies need a supplier onboarded before a purchase order can be raised, and that process routinely takes longer than the printing. For a first order with a new vendor, four to six weeks for procurement alone is realistic.
If Diwali is eight weeks out and the vendor is not yet onboarded, start with the paperwork rather than with the design.
GST, invoicing and corporate gift procurement →
Frequently asked
When should we order Diwali corporate gifts? Six weeks before the festival if addresses are known, eight if vendor onboarding or a purchase order is involved. Work backwards from the festival rather than forwards from now.
What is the actual production time? 5 to 14 days from order to doorstep, 5 to 12 to Delhi NCR. Collection of addresses and content sits in front of that and is usually longer.
Why does ordering on a Friday help? We dispatch every Monday. A Friday order catches that week’s dispatch; a weekend order waits seven days for the next one.
What if we have left it too late? Drop the per-person personalisation, ship to one office, or move the occasion to a year-end thank you in November — which arrives when nothing else does.
Does delivery slow down during the festival? Yes. Courier networks are at their yearly peak, so plan against the upper end of the range rather than the middle.
Part of our guide to gifting for large teams. See also: Diwali corporate gifting and how ordering 100 units works.
For teams and bulk orders: Corporate & bulk gifting · Photo magazines from ₹499