E-orders, coming soon to a post office near you

Speaking to The Indian Express, Minister of State for Communications Tapan Sikdar said, “We are trying to diversify into new value added services which will wipe out our annual budgetary deficit of Rs 1,700 crore. All these services will be added without incurring any additional expenditure with the existing infrastructure and staff.”

This network will have the benefit of linking the major centres in the country. This would facilitate not only money tranfers, but also delivery of goods and services against instant money transfers. The advantage will be the time saved as well as the reach of the postal network in the area which can tap the huge existing market potential.

“There are 1,54,149 post offices in the country,” explains Sikdar. “No company can match this distribution network, and the postal department can be used even for delivery of goods and services when managed in a professional way. And if this generates more revenue for the department, what is the harm?”

The DoP is shortly planning to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with US-based Western Union Financial Services which will include facilitating domestic cash transfers and global payment solutions. Confirming this, Sikdar said the proposal was in the final stages.

As a result of this tie-up, in monetary terms the DoP will get a share of 30 per cent of all fee revenue generated out of money transfers performed to or from DoP network locations, and another 30 per cent for the foreign exchange gain revenue for transactions between an overseas destination on the Western Union’s network to a DoP location in India.

During the first phase, a pilot project would run for three months which would involve linking up of the 77 centres of the DoP through V-SATs. In the second phase, 200 more locations would be added. In the third, this will be increased to 600 and in the final phase at the end of five years, 10,000 centres will be connected.

Says Sikdar, “Already we had started some revenue generating schemes which are yielding results. We had started selling space on post cards and inland letters for advertisers. This has begun to yield revenues and has encouraged us to look for other unconventional means to prop up our revenues.”