India Post Goes Digital – 1.5L Post Offices To Be Digitalized; Handheld Devices For Postman!

In one of biggest push for Digital India, Government has decided to digitalize 1.5 lakh post offices across India; which includes 1.3 lakh post offices in rural areas.

A budget of Rs 4909 crore has already been allocated for this project, which would be completed by March, 2017.

Special emphasis has been laid on rural post offices, called Gramin Daak Sewak post offices so that the advantages of Digital India is spread far and wide. As per reports, BharatNet project, which aims to connect all villages with broadband internet would be the backbone of this special digitalization drive.

Setting up of a centralized data center, connecting all post offices with intranet, advanced disaster management and data recovery systems are some of the processes which would be implemented to make India Post one of the most technologically advanced platform in the whole world.

Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informed the Parliament that Telecommunication Consultant India Limited ( TCIL) shall be the provider of handheld devices while RICOH India Limited would provide the technology.

Interestingly, Infosys has been given the contract to be ‘Rural System Integrator’.

A special mobile app would be launched, which would enable India Post’s payment banking as well.

Postman Goes Digital As Well

The image of the postman has been quite traditional as of now: a guy in khaki uniform carrying a brown bag on a cycle.

But soon, this image will be drastically change. Postman across India would be provided with handheld devices, which would be connected with the national data centers via SIM card. It would be powered by solar power, and he would be trained to help the rural users to deposit money, withdraw money and provide financial services as well.

We have already reported that India Post is turning into a banking enterprise, especially after it received the banking license from RBI.

India Post’s first saving bank ATM is already launched in Chennai.

Story So Far..

India Post has actually surpassed SBI in implementing the advanced ‘core banking solution’ as 18,231 post offices have been enabled with this new way of banking.

In April 2013, India Post had established their first data center in Mumbai, and as of now, 25,297 post offices are connected with this IT infrastructure.

In Mysore, disaster recovery system was installed last year, which would be now expanded.