In a bid to reinvigorate the Postal Department by linking it with booming e-commerce, IT and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is scheduled to meet heads of Amazon India and Flipkart this week.
Amazon India Vice-President and Country Manager Amit Agarwal and Monique Meche, Vice President of Global Public Policy at Amazon are scheduled to meet Mr. Prasad on Tuesday.
Flipkart co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal is also expected to meet the Minister on November 13, sources said.
The agenda of the meeting is to discuss the ways in which India Post can be utilised by e-commerce players to deliver goods across the country.
The government is also looking at using e-commerce to improve the efficiency of postmen, and contemplating ways to incentivise them for timely delivery of goods.
“The postmen are expected to get some reward for timely delivery of products, although its just an idea as of now,” said a source.
India Post has over 1.55 lakh post offices, of which more than 1.39 lakh are in the rural areas. According to market analysts, last-mile delivery of products ordered by online shoppers will figure as one of the major deciding factors for e-commerce firms like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and so on.
The opportunity in back-end logistics for online shopping segment is estimated to be about Rs.3,500-4,000 crore, a major part of which is last mile delivery.
