| Time zone | India Standard Time (IST) |
| UTC offset (today) | UTC+05:30 |
| Daylight saving | Delhi stays on IST (UTC+5:30) all year and has no daylight saving time. |
| Business hours | Private offices typically work 9:30 or 10:00 to 18:00 or later, central government offices 9:00 to 17:30, and banks around 10:00 to 16:00. Most offices close Saturday and Sunday, though many banks close only on the second and fourth Saturday. |
| Country | India |
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru all read the same time, because India uses a single zone for the entire country. The odd half hour comes from IST being pinned to the 82.5 degrees east meridian near Mirzapur rather than a whole-hour line.
A practical side effect is that the sun rises far earlier in the northeast than in Gujarat. In Delhi, sunrise ranges from about 5:20 in June to about 7:15 in early January, and winter fog can make those January mornings feel even later. Since IST never shifts, any gap you see with another country only changes when that other country moves its clocks.
For New York, Delhi is 9h30 ahead in the US summer and 10h30 ahead in winter. An 8:00 or 8:30 call in New York reaches Delhi in the evening, around 17:30 to 19:00, which most Indian teams accept. London is 4h30 behind in summer and 5h30 behind in winter, so the London morning matches the Delhi afternoon neatly.
Gulf callers have it easiest: Dubai is only 1h30 behind, so working days line up almost completely. Remember that many Delhi offices stay busy late into the evening but are slower to respond before 10:00.
No. Every city in India uses IST, UTC+5:30, so Delhi and Mumbai always show the same time.
No. India briefly used war-time adjustments decades ago but has kept IST unchanged all year since then.
IST is set to UTC+5:30 to suit the country as a whole. Nepal uses UTC+5:45 and Pakistan UTC+5, so crossing those borders shifts clocks by 15 or 30 minutes.
· Written by Om Vaghani, ClockAura