Identifying ways to increase India post’s share of e-commerce business

Abstract

India Post is a government-operated postal network system operating in India and is the only largest network across the country after railways. The legacy of India Post roots back in 1850’s when Britishers felt the need for a postal system in the country and established the first post office at Allahabad, India. The expansion of India Post across different locations then started and by 1861, there were 889 post offices handling nearly 43 million letters and over 4.5 million newspapers annually. A number of acts were then passed by the government to regulate the Post and Telegraph services. In a historical event, India Post services were expanded from land based to airmail on 18th February 1911 when the first official airmail flight took a letter to King George V of the United Kingdom from Allahabad to Naini, a journey of 18 km lasting 27 minutes across the Ganges.[ 1 ] Post-independence India Post continued to expand on a nation-wide basis providing a number of services. At present, Indian Postal Service had 1,55,015 post offices, of which 1,37,890 (approx 89%) were in rural areas remaining in urban. India post network has registered a six-fold growth since independence, with the expansion's focus primarily in rural areas. India Post is one of the largest employer in the country with a huge employee base of nearly 5,50,000. Though there are a number of private courier service providers operating within the country but none of them has the comparable and scale advantage that India Post has.