India Post to take e-commerce to rural Tamil Nadu

Chennai: More and more e-commerce companies are looking to make use of India Post’s wide network across the country in order to increase their rural reach.

The latest to join the list is Bangalore-based mVikarsha Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd which has signed a so-called memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Tamil Nadu circle of India Post to provide assisted e-commerce solutions through head post offices and sub-post offices.

E-commerce companies, including Flipkart.com, Myntra, Snapdal.com and Amazon.in, already have tie-ups with India Post to provide distribution and cash-on-delivery services. The postal department has an e-commerce and parcel processing centre in Parel, Mumbai, with a capacity to handle 30,000 parcels per day.

mVikarsha Mobile Solutions offers several brands for rural consumers through its mVPayDirect™ marketplace platform, and provides e-commerce and m-commerce solutions, right from placing orders to delivery to payment processing, logistics tracking and bank integration for payments and settlements.

It will now help sub-post office staff to assist customers in browsing, ordering and getting delivery of products.

“mVPayDirect™ is the assisted e-commerce platform of the mVikarsha Mobile Solutions that enables every India Post Office to implement drop-ship e-commerce counter, especially in geographies where the last-mile delivery is always India Post,” said R. Jayakrishnan, COO, mVikarsha Mobile Solutions in an e-mail response.

mVPayDirect™ platform sells products of brands including TTK Prestige Ltd, Titan Co. Ltd, Viveks Ltd, Classic Polo Pvt. Ltd, Vummidi Bangaru Chetty and Sons, HCL Infosystems Ltd and Nokia India Pvt. Ltd.

The firm, which was established in 2012, has earlier signed projects with the postal department in various districts of south Karnataka. “By October we will have our roll-out completed across North Karnataka also,” said Jayakrishnan. “Next would be Andhra Pradesh, followed by Telangana and Kerala, eventually covering all south Indian states,” he added.

With 2.27 million rural broadband users, Tamil Nadu follows Karnataka (2.77 million) and Kerala (2.52 million) in Internet penetration.

According to a recent report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) International, usage of social media in rural India has grown by 100% during the last one year with 25 million users in rural India.

According to the Social Media in India 2014 report, there were 143 million social media users in India as on April 2015. About 61% of these users access social media on their mobile device. With the expected increase in mobile traffic, the number of users accessing social media on mobile is set to rise along with payments modes such as m-commerce.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.