India Post should become the largest player in e-commerce: Telecom Min

NEW DELHI: Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today said that India Post has the potential to become the largest player in the e-commerce segment.

"I want that in e-commerce, India Post should become the largest player and you have to do it... if you take four steps, I will take 10 steps with you because I am seeing that in India, e-commerce has got a very good future," he said while launching an e-commerce Centre and mobile app for India Post at Safdarjang here.

The mobile app for India Post is Android-based and includes features such as real-time tracking, post office search and postage calculator. With the app, parcels can reach up to far-flung and remote areas of the country.

India Post currently has over 1.55 lakh post offices, of which more than 1.39 lakh are in rural areas.

The minister also said India Posts is best equipped to lead government efforts to accelerate pace of economic growth in rural India. It has to be the lead-partner in the private sector’s keenness to reach rural India.

Considering the rapid growth of e-commerce business in the country in the recent past, the Department of Posts, through Delhi Postal Circle has taken up a project to establish the e-commerce centre at Safdarjang. This processing centre will handle exclusively all the e-commerce business amd will ensure quick and smooth operation starting from booking till dispatch from the Centre.

The Centre is equipped with modern technology and newly introduced conveyor belt where parcels get sorted with the help of conveyor belt. As a result, the e-commerce centre is now capable of handling 30,000 parcels/articles per day. The parcels are collected from the e-commerce customers, processed and dispatched within 24 hours to respective destination through quickest available flight/train, as the case may be.

The leading e-commerce customers, Amazon, Paytm, Yepme, Snapdeal, etc are already availing the benefits of fast, reliable and safe processing of their e-commerce parcels at the newly established e-commerce centre.

He said the Government was taking digitalization process in a mission mode and Ministry of Telecommunication and IT and more particularly India Posts has to play an important role in translating it into a reality. Growth in the e-commerce business has brought India Post in a very advantageous position and in the backdrop of golden past, there is no reason why it should not take lead position in this sector.