Priyanka Sahay and Shreya Nandi Moneycontrol News
In a first, the government is planning to allow the Department of Post (DoP) to carry out joint ventures with private investors to boost domestic trade in e-commerce.
The move is expected to help the postal department enhance its infrastructure and further facilitate delivery for the e-commerce sector.
"The Department of Post is taking the necessary steps to increase their infrastructure for e-commerce. For this purpose, they have also set up a New Parcel Directorate for e-commerce packages. It was suggested that given the extensive reach of DoP, they could also consider having joint ventures with private investors," said the government as per the minutes of the first meeting of the Standing Group of Secretaries on E-commerce.
Moneycontrol has a copy of the minutes of the meeting.
The postal department has already been working on the standardisation of pin codes, with pilot studies undertaken for the integration of pin codes with the geographic information system (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS).
They also plan to collaborate with private companies to improve the efficiency of their delivery system by training postal department personnel to handle e-commerce packages.
The Department of Industry and Promotion (DIPP) has also directed that in the next meeting, a few logistic delivery companies may be invited to make a presentation on best practices.
The date of the next meeting wasn't immediately clear.
According to a report, the e-commerce retail logistics market is valued at $1.35 billion in 2018, and is projected to witness a growth of approximately 36 percent in the next five years.
“E-retailers are investing huge sums in their captive logistics arms to increase capacity, expand facilities and reach, hire more manpower and set up fulfillment centres pan-India to cater to increasing demands of both, in-house as well as external clients,” according to a report on ‘e-commerce retail logistics in India’ published by KPMG.
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