Bulk gifting for pharma companies

No, and we will say so before you ask us to. The Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices, in force since March 2024, stops a company or its agents giving any gift or benefit in kind to a person qualified to prescribe or supply drugs, or to their family. The only things it leaves open are informational and educational items under 1,000 rupees that carry no commercial value of their own, such as a journal, a calendar or a treatment guideline. Steel and appliances have an obvious resale value, so nothing on this page would qualify. The tax side is settled too. In Apex Laboratories, in February 2022, the Supreme Court held that money spent on gifts to doctors is not a deductible business expense under Section 37(1).

Ask your compliance team before you place that order. The code reaches anyone qualified to prescribe or supply drugs, and a retail chemist holds a licence to supply, so the wording goes wider than doctors. It also names distributors, wholesalers and retailers as agents of the company, which is what stops a gift being routed through the trade to a prescriber. Advisers read the rest of the channel differently and no circular settles it. We supply what your compliance team clears and we will not push you past that line.

A gift in kind is tax free for the employee up to 15,000 rupees across the whole tax year, under Rule 15(5)(a) of the Income-tax Rules 2026. That replaced the old 5,000 rupee limit from 1 April 2026. It is a total for the year and not a limit for each gift, so the Diwali gift and the long service gift add together. Cross the figure and the whole amount becomes taxable, not only the part above it. Cash and gift cheques never qualify, whatever the value.

Up to 50,000 rupees per employee in a financial year, a gift is not treated as a supply at all under Schedule I of the CGST Act, so no GST arises on the giving. Above that figure the excess counts as a supply between related persons and is valued under the rules. Almost every order on this page sits well under 50,000 rupees a person.

No. Section 17(5)(h) blocks credit on goods disposed of by way of gift, whatever the value and whoever receives them. You pay the GST on our invoice and it stays a cost. Finance teams usually budget the gift at the price including GST for that reason, so the number they approve is the number they spend.

For your own employees, no separate liability arises. The value goes on Form 16 as a perquisite under salary and payroll deducts on it the way it already does. Channel partners are different. The rule on benefits and perquisites, which used to be Section 194R and now sits in the Income-tax Act 2025, applies 10 percent TDS once one recipient's total crosses 20,000 rupees in a financial year, and 20 percent where they have no PAN. Ordinary discounts and rebates fall outside it.

Yes. We raise a separate invoice against each GSTIN with that state's place of supply, so every unit carries its own cost and nobody splits one bill afterwards. Send us the list of sites with their GSTINs and delivery addresses and we handle the rest.

Wherever you tell us. Most companies send the whole quantity to the depot or the regional office and hand them out at the cycle meeting, which costs least and is easiest to account for. We also deliver to individual home addresses if you send us the list, and we send back proof of delivery against each one.

Seven days from a confirmed order to delivery, if the product is in stock and the artwork is signed off. Diwali is the exception. Stock and courier capacity both tighten from about September, so a Diwali order placed six weeks out is comfortable and one placed two weeks out is not.

Yes. We laser engrave on steel, which marks a name, a year or a plant permanently and does not rub off the way printing does. Appliances take a printed or an engraved plate, depending on the surface. You send the artwork, we send back a photograph of the first piece, and nothing goes into production until you approve it.