Though the traditional posts are replaced by technological advancements, your friendly postman might appear more often at your doorsteps to deliver a gadget, book are any other product that you ordered via an e-commerce portal. The postal department delivers over two lakh e-commerce parcels on a daily basis that is 100 percent more than what it used to deliver in the last year, reveals a national estimate.
As per the Chief Postmaster General (Maharashtra Circle) of India Post, Ashok Kumar Dash, e-commerce fulfillment (shipping) is a very huge business opportunity for the postal department. The associations with the e-commerce portals are expected to increase in number in the coming days. The quality of the deliver in distant areas might be crucial.
For India Post, this new business could be a prime revenue generator with an extraordinary increase in the daily mailing volumes as it is looking at partnerships with firms such as YEP, Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart. This move is claimed to generate revenue for the 200 year old straggler.
The e-commerce giant Flipkart has started shipments to the customers via the postal services. In Mumbai, the postal department has been shipping around 700 to 800 parcels on a daily basis for the past three months, claimed a person familiar with the happenings.
A couple of years back, the e-commerce revenue was below Rs 200 crore and it was predicted to increase by double. It was expected to be somewhere between Rs 400 crore and Rs 500 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2015.
As per the Postmaster General (Mumbai), India Post, PN Ranjit Kumar, the allIndiarevenue from e-commerce is believed to range between Rs 900 crore and Rs 1,000 crore in the fiscal year 2016 for India Post. He stated that the revenues are expected to increase in this segment. However, he did not share further details regarding the same.
India Post is expecting to cater to the increasing demand in this section mainly in the tier 2 and tier 3 cities where the private courier companies are limited. The department is trying to make use of its post office network with over 1.5 lakh branches.
