Ahmedabad: Head post offices ring in change, to sell mobile phones

While currently only mobile phones were being sold at this ‘post shoppe’ and more items maybe forthcoming, said officials.

The Gujarat Postal Circle has set up a ‘Post Shoppe’ in Ahmedabad. Initially, this shop will selling mobile phones and later it will also cover stationery items, souvenirs, cosmetic items, gift items, books. The chief postmaster general of the Gujarat Circle on Thursday handed over the first (mobile) phone to the first customer at a function held at the newly opened Post Shoppe in Ahmedabad GPO.

While currently only mobile phones were being sold at this ‘post shoppe’ and more items maybe forthcoming, said officials.

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“The Gujarat Postal Circle has plans to sell all kinds of items, mostly stationery at the ‘post shoppe’ here. There are already few in Bengaluru, Chennai, Jammu and Assam and in Gujarat and we may look at launching them in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Rajkot initially. While we have not yet decided the location of the next one yet, it could be at Navrangpura or Manekbag post offices in the city which have a good clientele and get good footfalls. Our business development division which looks into agreements of tying up with business players will be looking into it. At the Vibrant Gujarat 2015, we had set up a pavilion, where we sold all kinds of items and had tied up with watch brand HMT and Gandhi Ashram where we sold their books,” said Brigadier Sanjeev Thapar, Chief Postmaster General, Gujarat Circle.

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Thapar was speaking at the launch of the Gujarat Postal Circle starting its sale of mobile phones through its Head Post Offices. With India Post and BSNL having entered into an agreement with Noida-based Pantel Technologies Private Limited to sell Penta Bharat Phone PF 301 through the post offices.

“A pilot was successfully carried out in the four states of South India where over 70,000 phones were sold in a period of less than a year and these will be sold in 34 head offices of Gujarat and will extend to other post offices in due course. The project is now being launched in other states as well and Gujarat became the fifth states after southern states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala to launch the services,” Thapar added.

Plans are also afoot to launch a couple of low priced smart phones from Penta in the next few weeks, said company officials. Thapar said that the Gujarat postal Circle had posted annual revenues of Rs 600 crore this year and has shown growth by 12 to 15 % in the past two years.

“The PLI’s (Postal Life Insurance) vertical have shown 20 to 25 % growth. We have collected close to Rs 4 crore in just electricity bill collection,” he said.

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