UTC to IST
New Delhi is 5½ hours ahead of UTC, and does not change across the year.
UTC and IST across the year
Neither zone observes daylight saving, so New Delhi is 5½ hours ahead of UTC on every day of the year and the absolute times never move either. This is the easiest kind of pair there is.
UTC: UTC never observes daylight saving. It is the only truly fixed reference on this list, which is why aviation, computing and broadcasting all use it.
IST: IST means India Standard Time (UTC+5:30), Irish Standard Time (UTC+1) and Israel Standard Time (UTC+2). This page uses India, which is what the overwhelming majority of searches intend. India does not observe daylight saving, so the offset never changes.
UTC to IST at a glance
Working-hours conversions, using the July relationship. The live converter above always reflects today.
| UTC — UTC | IST — New Delhi |
|---|---|
| 8:00 am | 1:30 pm |
| 9:00 am | 2:30 pm |
| 10:00 am | 3:30 pm |
| 11:00 am | 4:30 pm |
| 12:00 pm | 5:30 pm |
| 1:00 pm | 6:30 pm |
| 2:00 pm | 7:30 pm |
| 3:00 pm | 8:30 pm |
| 4:00 pm | 9:30 pm |
| 5:00 pm | 10:30 pm |
Scheduling between UTC and New Delhi
The workable window is 9:00 am to 1:00 pm in UTC — 2:30 pm to 6:30 pm in New Delhi. That is 4 hours out of a nine-hour working day, and everything outside it costs somebody their morning or their evening.
4 hours is a comfortable overlap; you can schedule inside it without much negotiation. The useful habit is still to put the New Delhi time in the invitation body as well as relying on the calendar to convert, because the person reading it on a phone will trust what they can see.
The two edges behave differently. Booking at 9:00 am UTC time means New Delhi is late in its afternoon and may be winding down; booking at 12:00 pm means UTC is mid-afternoon while New Delhi is closer to the end of the day. Where the decision matters, give the later-in-the-day side the earlier slot.
If you are the one in UTC
New Delhi is ahead of you, which means their day is already ending as yours gets going. By the time you are at your desk at 9:00 am, it is 2:30 pm there — so anything you send in your morning arrives in their afternoon, with time to act on it. The practical consequence is that your late afternoon is dead time for anything needing a reply from New Delhi: they are asleep, and you will not hear back until your next morning.
So the discipline that pays off is front-loading. Anything New Delhi needs from you should go out early in your day while they are still working; anything you need from them should be asked for before you leave, so it is waiting when you return. Treat their evening as the deadline, not yours.