India Department of Posts launches `Direct Post’
With competition catching up fast, India Post is changing with the times! Coming on top of several new initiatives to provide value additions to its customers, the Department of Posts on Monday launched "Direct Post".
The "Direct Post" service enables a customer to distribute publicity material for marketing a product to a large number of households in a particular area through the post office.
The Department of Posts will charge Rs. 1. 50 for each A4 size material, a senior department official told The Hindu .
The latest offering from India Post is expected to make a dent in the distribution of pamphlets along with newspapers by vendors.
"For its sheer size and reach, this is a better way to market a product with six lakh workforce spread over 1,55,000 post offices. Besides, subscribers may not read publicity material distributed along with newspapers. But when it is delivered by a postman, chances are that people will pay lot more attention," says the official.
The department will also shortly install ATMs on the premises of post offices for the benefit of those holding savings bank account under several schemes as well as maintaining monthly income schemes with the department.
"The Department of Posts is in the process of tying up with several leading banks for setting up ATMs", the official said.
This is aimed at facilitating the 160 million account holders with India Post having cumulative deposits in excess of Rs. 26 lakh millions.
India Post has tied up with various entities such as BSNL, Western Union Money Transfer, Oriental Insurance and mutual funds such as SBI, UTI, Principal, Prudential and ICICI for distribution of their products. It also sells bonds such as IDBI Flexi bonds and ICICI bonds.
The department also runs Business Post – a one stop solution for bulk mailers, SpeedPost Passport Service in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs for issuing passports, Express Parcel post, Data Post, epost, eBillPost, Retail Post and Media Post.
"Reach out. . . throughout" is the new mantra of India Post with the aim of providing a one-stop solution for all the services required by the public, the official said.
Copyright © 2005 Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.
Postal department responds to market
Business Standard, p 8 07-20-2005
By Our Bureau Bangalore
As part of this, the postal department in Karnataka has brought out `Direct Post'. This comes against the background of increasing commercial activities in the country and the rising need for direct advertising of products and services by business organisations.
Direct mailing is a means of distributing advertising material directly (the company addresses envelopes) to prospective customers. Direct Post on the other hand will allow businesses to send unaddressed mailers, pamphlets, brochures and other advertising materials to prospective customers at very low rates.
With advances in technology, the quantity of personal mail being sent by post is falling rapidly and as a result the postal department is devising strategies to tap the commercial mail segment which in fact is growing, according to R Ganeshan, secretary, department of posts.
The company uses the database of the post office to have its mailers sent by the post office to selected categories of addressees instead of affixing the addresses itself. "This is an inexpensive and effective way of advertising," said R Ganeshan.
He added that the department will also undertake designing and delivering advertisement brochures. Unlike developed countries where the market for unaddressed post is 2-3 times larger than addressed, in India, the size of direct mail is 50 crore and direct post (unaddressed component of direct mail) contributes half of it.
The department also plans to network all the post offices in the country and as part it has computerised (installed computers) 4,000 post offices. It aims to computerise 7,000 more by April, 2007. The department has requested the ministry of communications and information technology to computerise the remaining 15,000 post offices. Networking will follow computerisation.
"The networking of post offices will help online transactions and increase efficiency of the postal department," said R Ganeshan.
