Cash-on-delivery: Postal department sees Rs 1,300 cr in FY16

The postal department’s revenues by ways of COD consignments from e-commerce majors have surged to Rs 1,300 crore during the year ending March 2016.

India Post is cashing in on the boom in e-commerce deliveries, especially the surging cash-on-delivery consignments of the country’s top online sellers — Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart-Myntra.

The postal department’s revenues by ways of COD consignments from e-commerce majors have surged to Rs 1,300 crore during the year ending March 2016, up from Rs 500 crore during the whole of 2014-15, and just Rs 100 crore in 2013-14. The deliveries are primarily directed at tier-II towns, and parts of the rural heartland, where India Post has unparalleled reach.

The incremental e-commerce revenue boost, said Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, are proving to be a big boost for the postal department. “The postal department collected Rs 1,300 crore in COD collections during 2015-16, compared with Rs 100 crore in 2013-14,” Prasad told The Indian Express.