Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Postlesss country

When was the last time you used a post office in India for transporting some letter/documents ? Wellll, for me I think it was in Chamrajpet when I was studying in primary school.

The post offices were primarily meant for communication. Once upon a time these ppl used to be the backbone of Indians to exchange personal/professional messages. With the advent of technology snail mails became a passe, almost non-existant now. People started moving towards telephony and later e-mails for basic communication needs. Now u have scraps, blogs and what not. The postal department crumbled.

The postal department did not re-invent. It did not bother to take a cue from the foriegn postal departments. Every advanced economy has a postal system and they are one of the richest organisation in their respective countries. USPS, DPWN, AUPost .. just to name a few. Infact USPS figures in top 50 for the Fortune list. DPWN owns behemoths like DHL, EXEL etc. AUPost is the leading courier in Australia. And where is Indian post? Its lost its battle. A loss only due to not re-inventing. Not changing according to the market needs. What is the main revenue for these companies ? It is still posts. But they do a lot more than documents. They are couriers now. They have collaborated with the private players. They offer a wide range of solutions. They re-invent themselves and stay profitable.

The 1991 economic reforms have been a boon for several industries, but became a bane for the postal industry. The Indian postal department wanted people to send mails and give them revenue. They were not ready to carry your goods. They might have felt they would be coolies ;-)

Today the Indian postal department to save itself wants a legislation that private carriers should not be allowed to transport any documents/ packages < 500gm. WOWWWWWWW thats a magnificent invention :) with left's support this might be achieved too as there are no big players in the transportation industry to muscle the governement. Way to GO. :)

Mr. laloo has to be patted to try and make Railway industry the most preferred Freight corridor. I think with the low-cost airlines coming into picture, the railway industry had to look beyond passengers for profitability and they are moving in the right direction.

Railways Re-invented. Posts - shutdowned
U can no more sing chitti aayi hai chitti aayi hai

2 comments:

sarvagnaani said...

is the situation so bad??I know dept of posts may have lost out on lot of revenue to couriers..but tell me how many couriers go beyond towns..to villages?
and it is not that they are not reinventing, speed post was introduced to tackle the challenge of courier, and if u lookup there website
http://www.indiapost.gov.in/nsdefault.htm
u will find lot of new stuff..i guess what is lacking is advt and awareness in gen public abt the schemes ..to be honest i checked out their webpage only after reading your post :)

as an aside..i have always wondered abt the efficiency of postal dept..it does so many other things than just handling posts, like savings acc, insurance and its a distribution point for so many govt forms and such stuff..I think its the most honest and efficient govt dept.

GD said...

Kummi: I know about the speed post. Infact it was the best option for sending ur docs to the US. But then in a competitive you need to market your products and win the share of goodies. Aggressive marketing is required.

I am not questioning abt their honesty, but about the profitability. They havent scaled themselves in terms of revenue. As I told you look at USPS, they are No 1 in US and they have private players like Fedex UPS and DHL in the market (highly competitive). Indian post lost to players like DTDC, Bluedart, which is a sad state of affaris