The Hindu Business Line : Indiapost — transforming into a `financial mart'

A GROUP of employees of the Indian postal service is a rather unlikely set to be training for the Association of Mutual Funds of India's certification test for distribution of mutual funds.

SBI Mutual Fund officers in Tamil Nadu, training postal employees to help them prepare for the test, say the decision of Tamil Nadu Post to get them trained illustrates the seriousness of many postal circles in setting about implementing the Centre's instruction that Indiapost reposition itself as a giant `financial mart'.

Nowhere else, perhaps, is this more evident than in the Maharashtra circle, headquartered in Mumbai. Its latest offering is dematerialisation of National Savings Certificates and Kisan Vikas Patra at 10 post offices in Mumbai, for which it has tied up with the National Securities Depository Ltd.

Already, the Maharashtra circle has agreements with UTI, IDBI, ICICI and SBI for selling their mutual funds at post offices. Another tie-up with Oriental Insurance for distribution of 13 non-life products is on the cards, said Ms K. Noorjehan, Chief Post Master-General, Maharashtra.

"In every area of activity, we are trying to move a step forward to augment revenues," she said. The billing mail section is now handling bulk bills of utilities such as the 6 million bills of Reliance IndiaMobile for a special fee of Rs 3 per bill of not more than 20 gm in weight.

The circle is talking to Tata Teleservices, Orange and Airtel too for bill distribution. "From distribution we are moving to collection. We offer to collect bills for these companies at all post offices," said Ms Noorjehan.

The circle has mobilised more than Rs 10,000 crore for the year ended March 31. One of its other successes is the Rural Postal Life Insurance Scheme, through which it has collected Rs 1,108 crore.

"We can therefore mobilise loans or make payments for others too, in remote areas — SBI and HDFC are in talks with us on this," said Ms Noorjehan.

ITC has also approached Indiapost with a request to outsource its e-choupal centres (where farmers use an IT network for information) to the latter.

Passport application work is another activity in the circle (which it does for a fee of only Rs 100). The circle also sells application forms of almost all government and quasi-government entrance examinations and recruitments.

The trustworthiness and familiarity of postmen in their locality has made them useful in another exercise — market surveys.

"We undertake to do market surveys through postmen. We have already done it for a women's magazine. With a network of 58,000 employees across the State a good market survey possible. (The entire electoral roll verification process was outsourced to the postal department in Kerala by the State Election Commission.)

The expensive V-SAT networks of post offices, employed for money order squaring is now being employed for `e-post', an e-mail related service available for Rs 10. A letter is scanned and sent by V-SAT to its destination post office from where a scanned copy is physically delivered on the same day.

The only problem is — how does one inform people that post offices make all these services available when they hardly visit the post office anymore. "That is something we are figuring out," said Ms Noorjehan.

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