India Post Task Force finalises report; to meet Prasad

   NEW DELHI: The Task Force set up to suggest ways for turning around India Post has finalised its report and has sought a meeting with Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Parsad to discuss its findings.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set up the Task Force to leverage the postal network in India and to enhance the role of India Post in financial inclusion, among other services like delivery of goods for eCommerce firms.

With the world's largest postal network, India Post has about 1.55 lakh post offices spread across the country. On an average, a post office serves an area of 21.21 sq km and a population of 7,175 people.

The Task Force, chaired by Former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian, has finalised its report, sources said.

"The 10-member force has now sought a meeting with Prasad to discuss the findings of the report before submitting it to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO)," a source said.

The Task Force includes the Department of Posts Secretary Kavery Banerjee, Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg, Department of Electronics and IT Secretary R S Sharma, Rural Development Secretary L C Goyal and former SEBI Chairman G N Bajpai.

Earlier this year in October, Banerjee had said the Task Force will submit its report by the end of the year.

The government is planning to utilise the huge resources at the disposal of India Post to provide cost-effective and innovative solutions to the citizens like financial services using digital connectivity, a source said.

The idea behind the exercise is to enable the postman in rural areas to provide a plethora of services like savings and insurance, normal postal operations and also value added services like accepting payments of various services as well as registration of data.

Prasad has on various occasions said India Post with its unparallelled rural, urban and semi-urban reach is best suited to offer delivery services to e-commerce players.
 

India Post Eyes $9 Billion E-Commerce Business.

New Delhi: Eyeing $9 billion business opportunity in booming e-commerce business, India Post, which has the biggest network and serves the last mile, is boosting its infrastructure for real-time tracking of parcels through satellites using a new technology.
The Postal Department will also soon start an SMS facility to inform customers about delivery status of their parcels.
India Post, which is already in tie-ups with e-commerce majors Amazon and Snapdeal, will also have security gadgets like CCTV and access control systems to ensure safety of articles.
Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a meeting with officials in the Department of Posts has directed them to focus on opportunities in e-commerce and tune infrastructure to facilitate growth of the sector which has huge potential to bring investments and generate new jobs.
"The minister has asked India Post to leverage is reach to provide special facilities to local weavers, craftsmen/women, painters and artists so that they also benefit from e-commerce," a ministry official told PTI. The minister wanted their products to be picked up from their doorsteps and delivered to end-customers, the official added.
The official said that "postal department has started working on development of road transport network for parcel movement on majority routes with GPS facility. It is augmenting facility of secure area for parcels with access control and CCTV around it".
As per industry estimates shared by India Posts, e-commerce business in India was about $6 billion in value in 2012 and is expected to reach $76 billion by 2021.
The distribution, delivery or logistics constitutes approximately 12 per cent of the total e-commerce market accounting for about $9 billion by 2021.
India Post, which has world's largest postal network of 1.55 lakh post offices, has seen multi-fold rise in business since the time it entered in partnership with e-commerce companies.
Amazon started booking parcels at one place with India Post in 2013 which has now expanded to five locations by October 2014.
"Amazon shipped 7000 parcels in January this year. By October, number of article booked in a month by Amazon increased to about 85,000. Snapdeals send 2000-3000 parcels per day. Naaptol is giving about Rs 25 crore business to India Post per annum," the official said.
India Post is offering cash collection on delivery facility of product to 200 customers.
"Since December 2013 approximately India Post has collected Rs 280 crore as cash on delivery amount and paid to the e-commerce companies," the official said.

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Govt plans to use India Post's postmen to educate people on schemes and policy.

New Delhi: The government is planning to use India Post's 1.55 lakh-strong branch network to reach out to citizens in far flung and backward areas and educate them about the various policies, schemes and incentives.
The ministry of information and broadcasting runs various awareness programmes for the citizens leveraging the Internet and the social media.
However, these initiatives are still out of the reach of many who live in backward and far flung areas there is no connectivity, sources said.

Representational image.

"This category of population is sizable and within the reach of post offices. I&B ministry can design programmes region-wise, which can then be used by the postman to go to these areas and educate the people," a source said.
The idea is to utilise the huge network of India Posts' post offices across the country, especially to reach out to people in areas not connected with the Internet, and educate them about the government's policies, schemes and incentives, the sources added.
With the world's largest postal network, India Post has about 1.55 lakh post offices spread across the country. On an average, a post office serves an area of 21.21 sq km and a population of 7,175 people.
Besides, postman can also be used for directly collecting feedback from the people in rural areas on various policies and schemes, sources added.
"Also digital boards and panels can be set up at the post offices across these areas to educate people on not just schemes and policies, but also on issues related to health and education," they said.
The Task Force set up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is already holding consultations in this regard with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
Modi has set up the Task Force to leverage the postal network in India to enhance the role of India Posts in financial inclusion, among other services and it is expected to submit its report by year-end.
The Task Force includes the Department of Posts Secretary Kavery Banerjee, Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg, Department of Electronics and IT Secretary R S Sharma, Rural Development Secretary L C Goyal and former Sebi Chairman G N Bajpai.
Former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian is the Chairman of the Task Force.

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Government plans to transform India Post into a multi-service agency.

NEW DELHI: Aiming to leverage technology to provide cost-effective and innovative solutions, the government is planning to equip India Post to handle not only savings and insurance services, but also payments and data registration. 

With the world's largest postal network, India Post has about 1.55 lakh post offices spread across the country. On an average, a post office serves an area of 21.21 sq km and a population of 7,175 people. 

The government is planning to utilise the huge resources at the disposal of India Post to provide cost-effective and innovative solutions to the citizens like financial services using digital connectivity, a source said. 

"The Task Force is already in consultation with related ministries on how to best use these resources. Already there are plans to roll out hand-held devices and related software to post offices on a pan-India basis from October 2016," the source said. 

The idea behind the exercise is to enable the postman in rural areas to provide a plethora of services like savings and insurance, normal postal operations and also value added services like accepting payments of various services as well as registration of data, the source added. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set up a Task Force to leverage the postal network in India to enhance the role of India Posts in financial inclusion, among other services and is expected to submit its report by year-end. 

The Task Force includes the Department of Posts Secretary Kavery Banerjee, Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg, Department of Electronics and IT Secretary R S Sharma, Rural Development Secretary L C Goyal and former SEBI Chairman G N Bajpai. 

Former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian is the Chairman of the Task Force. 

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has on various occasions said India Post with its unparallelled rural reach is best suited to offer delivery services to e-commerce players. 

Already, the West Bengal circle of the postal department has approached various industrial bodies with a plan to create an online marketplace for the local traders. 

courtesy:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Amazon plans it big with India Post network to ramp up its delivery mechanism.

  
  NEW DELHI: E-commerce giant Amazon wants to do in India what Alibaba did in China. Amazon's India head Amit Agarwal on Tuesday met telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and urged him to allow the use of new technologies such as real-time tracking and monitoring devices on the India Post network to develop a delivery mechanism based on smart logistics.

India Post IT Modernisation Project- News Letter PARIVARTAN

IT PROJECT NEWS LETTER. CLICK HERE TO VIEW.

For last-mile linkage, online retailers tap India Post

As online retail comes of age in the country, e-commerce firms have begun to knock on India Post’s doors seeking quick delivery of their parcels. Though they have been using its services for some time in a small way, sales during Diwali saw a huge shift, with “almost all e-commerce firms” using the postal network to deliver the voluminous orders they received.

Seeing the spurt in demand, India Post launched the Same Day parcel delivery service here recently, promising to expand the service to other cities and ‘next day delivery’ service to customers in the hinterland.

The company has earmarked about ₹4,909 crore to deploy technologies to digitise its services in the next three years. “This is India Post 2.0. We are going to introduce technology in a big way in order to get connected with corporates and the digital generation,” John Samuel, Member of Postal Services Board, Department of Posts, told Business Line here on Wednesday.

Waking up to the needs of new retail players, the Department of Posts will further widen the reach of the same day parcel service to other regions as well.

Booking parcels

“You are used to seeing our postmen come to your homes in the day-time. As we launch the new services, you will see them coming in vans between 5 and 9 pm to deliver the parcels,” said Samuel.

“We are going to launch digital post-offices that let you book the parcels and make Speed Post consignments much easier. You can use smart-phones to complete some tasks, reducing human intervention,” he said.

courtesy: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/

(This article was published on November 3, 2014)