Indian postal services - leveraging the brand for financial services

Abstract

Indian Postal Department is one of the most widespread public infrastructure in the country. It is also a big employer with over 1 million employees in its 154,000 post office branches. This organization is a mammoth and has been burning the Indian government’s exchequer for quite a few decades. The postal department handles 16 billion items of mail per year. Through Post Office Savings Bank (POSB), it handles more than 110 million money orders and administers 114 million savings accounts. The Postal Department is currently in a state of flux, with a lot of competition from firms like local courier companies, and also a change in writing habits, which had resulted in dwindling revenue for the department from its traditional service, which is of delivering postal mail. This project aims to explore and study alternate sources of revenue which the post office can pursue by leveraging its distribution, which is undoubtedly one of the most well built distribution system in the country, being accessible to almost each and every citizen. The Postal Department already offers many a services apart from its traditional services. Many of these services are loss-making, thus leading to a re-look at them and also create services that could be used widely by the citizens.