Postal Department sees 45% growth in ecommerce parcel handling in 2014-15 IT and Communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad states that the Department of Posts has handled cash on delivery of Rs 500 crore till March 2015, which crossed Rs 1,000 crore in December 2015, and expected to reach Rs 1,500 crore by the end of fiscal year 2016. The postal department has set up 48 new parcel processing centres in the last 18 months, and plans to add 9 more in the financial year. This has led to 45% overall revenue growth in the parcel segment by 45% during 2014-15 and more than 100% in the current financial year. Speed Post registered a 12.5% growth in the current financial year, up from 8.9% last year, bringing overall revenues of Rs 1,100 crore till this month. Amazon India’s booking increased from an average of 50,000 items every month last year to 300,000 per month in the current year; while Flipkart and Myntra’s bookings saw an increase from 15,000 monthly to 30,000-50,000 every month. The Indian postal department has the biggest network in the world, and digitising it will ‘redefine operations to tap into the ecommerce industry’ especially for last mile logistics and bring in revenue, Prasad added. Also read: Quartz’s The world’s largest postal network wants to become a bank - and it should *** 36,738 gram panchayats now have optical fibre cable laid out under NOFN/BharatNet Under the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project, which has been now renamed to…
