With online orders piling up, India Post is hiring students
and the jobless to deliver goods, S.K. Sinha, secretary at the department of
post, said on Thursday.
The department
recently issued orders under which it can hire third-party persons, such as
unemployed people and students, to pick up and deliver articles from post
offices, with a 12% commission for every
“If
you pick up about 10 orders of about 1 kg, you can earn Rs100-250 per day,”
said Sinha, adding that the programme will also help generate employment.
There’s an upper limit for how much commission you can earn.
The outsourcing will augment its parcel service and bring it
at par with other private parcel services that offer to pick up orders from the
customer’s location.
The postal department’s revenue from COD (cash on delivery)
consignments from e-commerce majors surged to Rs.1,300 crore in the year ending
March 2016, up from Rs.500 crore in 2014-15, and just Rs.100 crore in 2013-14.
E-commerce firms availing India Post’s services include all
the major online portals such as Amazon India, Flipkart as well as Snapdeal.
The requirements to register for the program is an
identification proof and reference from two prominent person known to the post
office, after which the third party will be given a licence to deliver and pick
up articles.
With e-commerce and financial services expected to take off,
the department is expecting earnings from these services to help break even in
the next 6-7 years.
India Post recorded a deficit of about Rs.6,000 crore for
fiscal year 2015, a 14.4% increase from a year earlier. The department is also
looking at revenue from its online service, e-post office, which sells
philately products as well as the newly launched bottled Gangajal, water from
the river Ganga.
There is strong demand for Gangajal with almost all the stock
sold out, added Sinha.
India Post has sold at
least 4,000 bottles of Gangajal, considered holy by Hindus, from its post
offices and online and has witnessed strong demand from southern states such as
Tamil Nadu.
“While India Post doesn’t generate any profit from the
Gangajal program, it does create a lot of goodwill for the department, which in
turn can help attract users for its speed post and banking services,” Sinha
said.
Source:LiveMint
