Indian government launches e-Post Office website
The Indian government has launched a new consumer-facing “e-Post Office” website, to help make postal services more inclusive and accessible. The site takes the form of a slimmed-down re-design of the India Post website, initially offering services including provision of money orders, stamp sales for collectors, express and international shipment tracking as well as an information and feedback facility.
But, the intention is for the first phase of the site to be expanded to provide a wider range of services for consumers.
Launching the e-Post Office site last week, India’s communications minister Shri Kapil Sibal said the portal would allow India Post customers to carry out postal business “any time, and from anywhere”, using debit or credit cards to make payments.
Sibal said: “In the changing word, the ways we live are changing. Launch of e-Post is a step in this direction offering a bouquet of services to the consumers. This is inline with shift in marketing trend of service provider reaching the consumers.”
India Post worked with various public and private sector agencies to develop the e-Post Office. The postal operator is aiming to make use of its mail and parcel services to expand its activities in e-commerce fulfillment.
The government said “concrete plans” are in place to scale up the portal to a full-fledged e-Market Place, which would offer a wide range of postal and non-postal products.
And, minister of state Shri Sachin Pilot has asked for the e-Post Office site to be made available in regional languages to make it more accessible.
The Indian government suggested that the e-post office could “revamp” the use of the money order, some 130 years after it was launched in India.
While India Post has already introduced electronic versions of the money order, in the form of the lectronic Money Order (eMO), Instant Money Order (iMO), both of which will be available from the epost office site, the government said the new site would spur on the products.
It said the move was expected to contribute “substantially” to the revenue of the Postal Department in the years to come.
