What an employee onboarding kit costs in India in 2026

An employee onboarding kit in India costs ₹798 to ₹3,098 a head plus GST for the four builds we ship most, before the volume discount. Five other vendors checked on their own sites on 27 September 2026 publish kits from ₹390 to ₹4,633. The spread comes from what goes in the box.

Four things set the price: how many items, whether there is apparel, how the box is branded and packed, and whether it goes to one office or to each new hire's home.

Four kit builds, priced

Adalwin Commerce™ prices are per kit, exclusive of GST, before the volume discount. Logo branding is included.

Essentials suits campus intakes and interns. Standard is the default day-one kit. Premium goes to engineers, designers and senior individual contributors. Executive is for leadership hires, where the kit is part of the offer. Anything can be swapped and the price moves with it. The builds are on the welcome kits page, and the same items are priced one by one in the under ₹2,000 range.

What five other vendors publish

Each figure below is from the vendor's own page on 27 September 2026. Where a page does not publish a fact, the table says so.

None of the five pages says whether its price includes GST. Ask before you compare, because it moves a ₹1,299 kit by up to ₹234. We invoice item by item, with the HSN code and rate on every line, and apparel is taxed at 5% up to ₹2,500 a piece.

60 joiners, and 12 senior hires, worked through

The volume ladder is 8% off at 25 to 49 kits, 15% at 50 to 99, 22% at 100 to 249 and 30% at 250 and above. Below 25 there is no discount.

Per-kit figures are rounded to the rupee; totals use the exact discounted rate. GST at 18% is an illustration; the invoice rate depends on each item. Delivery to individual homes is quoted separately.

The step matters. 49 Standard kits at 8% cost ₹58,559 plus GST. 50 kits at 15% cost ₹55,208. The fiftieth kit saves ₹3,351, so if a cohort lands at 46 to 49, order 50 and hold the spares for next month's joiners.

Lead times: one batch, or a kit for every joiner

Branded kits take 15 to 20 working days from artwork sign-off, and 10 working days within Pune. Unbranded stock items ship in 2 to 3 working days. For a campus intake with a fixed joining date, count back from that date and sign off the artwork before the 20 working days start.

For steady hiring, a standing programme ships a branded kit every time somebody joins. You set the build and the budget once. For remote joiners we send a secure address-collection link, so HR never handles a spreadsheet of home addresses, and the kit is timed to the start date.

Tax: the kit counts towards the ₹15,000

Income tax: from 1 April 2026, gifts in kind from an employer have nil perquisite value up to an aggregate of ₹15,000 a tax year per employee, under Rule 3(7)(iv), up from ₹5,000. Where the kit is treated as a gift in kind, it counts towards the same ₹15,000 as the Diwali gift. A ₹3,098 Executive kit and a ₹1,299 Diwali box come to ₹4,397, well inside the limit.

GST: under Entry 2 of Schedule I to the CGST Act, gifts up to ₹50,000 a year from an employer to an employee are not treated as a supply. Input tax credit on goods given away as gifts is blocked under Section 17(5)(h), so GST on a kit is usually a cost, not a credit. Detail on employee swag tax in India. We are a merchandise company, not a tax adviser. Check with yours.

What goes wrong

• The kit arrives after the joiner. The clock starts at artwork sign-off, not at the purchase order, so sign off the artwork the same week the PO goes out.
• Apparel sizes are collected late. Ask for a size with the delivery address, not after production starts.
• The budget was inclusive of GST and the quote was not. Decide which it is before you shortlist.
• A cohort of 49. Check where the next discount step sits before you confirm the number.
• Home delivery is decided after the office drop is booked. It costs more per parcel, so settle it at the quote stage.

Send your monthly joiner count, budget per kit and whether kits go to the office or to homes through the form on the welcome kits page. You get a written quote within 24 hours, Monday to Saturday.