India Post best suited to offer delivery services to e-commerce players: Ravi Shankar Prasad

In what could be potentially big development for world's largest postal service India Post, Communication and IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, asserted that country’s postal service would be the best suited to offer delivery services to e-commerce players.

The Minister also emphasized upon the need to expose young officers to the latest developments and emerging trends in the postal and logistics sectors. He further highlighted that the digital India project, which aims to make broadband facility available in every village across the country, would turbo-drive e-commerce business in villages, for which it felt that services of India’s Post were best suited for, given its unparalleled rural reach. India Post has over 1.55 lakh post offices of which more than 1.39 lakh are in the rural areas. On an average, a post office serves an area of 21.21 square km and a population of 7,175 people.

However, as per few market reports, ‘last-mile delivery’ of products ordered by online shoppers could feature as one of the major deciding factors for e-commerce firms like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, etc. Presently, firms are already offering one-day delivery and this could further intensify with firms investing hugely in logistics to ramp up their delivery system.

According to Prasad, Post Office could also become a focal point for delivering not only government services, but also e-services to the people as in e-service centres, apart from commercially remunerative services for corporate/private players including conducting market surveys, information dissemination, etc.