Dear Comrades,
Department of Post is planning to introduce online version of postage stamps, which will enable India Post customers to use print out of the stamp for sending mails.
"Our effort is to make access of postal service easy and simple for users. We are working on project that will enable them to print copy of bar-code based receipt and use it in place of postal stamps for sending mails," Department of Post (DoP) Secretary Radhika Doraiswamy told PTI.
The project is a part of e-commerce initiatives by India Post, she added."Our minister (Union Minister for Communications and IT Kapil Sibal) has already inaugurated e-post office and has asked e-market place to be developed. We are in process of developing application for various platforms on internet," she added.
Under the e-market place project, DoP will facilitate selling of small scale and cottage industry products through its website.
The product catalogue will be published on internet and will give customers an option to select and make payments for the purchased product online.
Once the order in placed, post-office, located nearest to the product seller's location, will arrange for the pick-up and delivery of the product to the customer.
"We will accept orders from both domestic and international customers," Doraiswamy said.
Doraiswamy mentioned that DoP is contemplating introduction of home pick-up services for mails and parcels for some set of services such as registered post, insured post, speed post and WorldNet.
"Customer would have to pay online and register for the service. A postman will then go and pick the parcel or mail from the customer. The plan, however, is currently in a discussion phase," she said.
She added, "We have to ensure that post office gets the payment for delivering services and customers get services conveniently. Everything is being worked out through RFPs (request for proposals), but most of our services will come on internet in 2012," Doraiswamy said.
New Delhi, Apr 20 (PTI)
