Two services with “apostille” in the description, serving completely different documents — and mixing them up wastes weeks. If you’ve been told to “get eSanad” for a US degree, or quoted for a “US apostille” on an Indian certificate, this post untangles it in one question.
The one-question test
Which country issued the document?
- Issued in India (Indian degree, Indian PCC, CBSE certificate, Indian birth certificate) → apostilled in India, by the Ministry of External Affairs. eSanad is the government’s online channel for this.
- Issued in the USA (FBI PCC, US degree, US birth certificate, naturalization certificate) → apostilled in the USA, by the US Department of State or a state’s Secretary of State. That’s our service.
That’s the entire decision. The issuing country owns the apostille — always. No agency, embassy, or government platform can apostille another country’s documents, no matter what a sales pitch implies. (Why not? Here’s the full explanation.)
What eSanad actually is — and does well
eSanad is the MEA’s platform for contactless attestation and apostille of Indian documents, verified digitally against issuing authorities like CBSE and the National Academic Depository. When your document is in a connected digital depository, it’s a genuinely good system: cashless, paperless, no agent required.
Its structural limits are worth knowing before you rely on it:
- It only covers documents available in integrated digital depositories — broadly, recent certificates from connected boards and universities. Older documents and non-integrated institutions fall back to the traditional offline MEA process.
- Delivery is by post, and processing runs at government pace.
- And the one that matters for this post: it cannot touch a foreign document. A US degree uploaded to eSanad goes nowhere.
Common mix-ups, resolved
“I have a US master’s degree and an Indian bachelor’s — an agent quoted me one ‘apostille package’ for both.” They’re two different processes in two different countries. The Indian degree: MEA/eSanad in India. The US degree: notarized copy apostilled by the university state’s Secretary of State in the US. A package that doesn’t say this explicitly is a package that will stall on the US half.
“An attestation agency in my city says they can apostille my FBI PCC.” What they can actually do is courier it to a US partner — the apostille itself only happens at the US Department of State in Washington, DC. Nothing wrong with forwarding, but you’re paying an extra margin for an extra hop. We are the US side; that’s the whole difference.
“My OCI checklist wants apostilles on my US documents. Can the MEA do it since I’m applying in India?” No — the December 2024 OCI rules want US documents apostilled in the US. The MEA apostilles Indian documents for use abroad; your file needs the reverse.
“I need my Indian PCC apostilled for a job in Germany. Can you do it?” Honestly: no — that’s an Indian document, so it’s MEA/eSanad territory, and a good local agency (or eSanad itself, if your PCC qualifies) is the right tool. We do one thing: US documents. When someone asks us for the reverse direction, we say so and point them the right way.
The side-by-side
| eSanad / MEA | Veritas | |
|---|---|---|
| Documents | Indian-issued | US-issued |
| Apostille issued by | Ministry of External Affairs, India | US Dept of State / state Secretaries of State |
| Best for | Recent Indian certificates in digital depositories | FBI PCCs, US vital records, US degrees, naturalization certificates |
| Can handle the other side? | Never | Never — nobody can |
If you’re holding a mixed pile of Indian and US documents — the classic NRI situation — send the list on WhatsApp. We’ll mark which documents go through which country’s process, handle the US ones, and tell you plainly which ones aren’t ours to handle.