Distance makes no difference to the translation
Send a clear photograph. That is enough for us to quote from, and in most cases enough to work from. The translation comes back as a PDF by email.
For a certified translation, which is what most visa offices, universities and employers mean when they say certified, that PDF is often the whole job. Handing the document over in person would not improve it.
Prices follow the language pair and the document type. Where you live does not come into it. Indian languages start at ₹500 a page before GST, and the rest is on the pricing page.
What has to travel
Two things break the email-only pattern.
Notarisation happens on paper. A notary signs a physical declaration, seals it, and writes it into a register. Scans of that are often refused, so if your authority asks for notarisation, a hard copy has to reach you by courier.
The courier leg is usually what sets the deadline. On urgent jobs the translation is rarely the slow part. The days go on documents moving between offices, and then out to you. Tell us your deadline when you ask for a quote rather than after you accept one, because that is while the route can still be changed. Our page on urgent work says plainly which steps can be compressed and which cannot.
Where the document was issued matters more than where you live
The chain follows the document. If your degree was issued in Kerala and you now live in Noida, the first step still happens in Kerala.
State authentication happens in the issuing state. Privately issued documents, which includes affidavits, powers of attorney and translations themselves, have to be notarised and then authenticated by that state's authority before anyone can apostille them. How long that takes varies a great deal between states.
Apostille is central. The Ministry of External Affairs issues apostilles for the whole country, from Delhi. Every document that needs one arrives here eventually, whichever state it started in.
Embassy attestation is mostly here too. For countries outside the Hague Convention, which includes most of the Gulf, attestation is done at the destination country's mission, and the majority of missions sit in the diplomatic enclave at Chanakyapuri. The apostille guide sets out the order they happen in.
None of this moves faster because we are in Delhi. What it does mean is that the two centralised steps are ones we can stand in the queue for, instead of you making the trip.