India Post to Start Separate Company for Philately Business

The Department of Post is planning to set up an independent company for its philately business with an aim to boost revenues from the sale of collectible stamps. India Post Philately Company is proposed as a public limited company, fully owned by the government, with an authorized capital of Rs. 100 crore. “The proposed company will be a service-based one, which will not only sell its products to existing customers —collectors and philatelists — but will also try to attract new ones. It will focus on promotion of philately, mainly among the younger generation,” a senior official told. The proposal would soon be sent to the Cabinet. Philately in Text Books As part of the strategy to spread the interest in philately among the younger generation, S.K. Sinha, Secretary, Posts, wrote to the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resources Development last month, seeking that a chapter on philately be included in the textbooks for Class V, VI, or VII. India Post is eyeing a jump of Rs. 100 crore, or over 250 per cent, in turnover from the philately segment to Rs. 141 crore in the current fiscal. The earnings from this segment stood at Rs. 39.88 crore during 2015-16 and Rs. 32.85 crore during 2014-15. This does not include revenues from the sale of stamps meant for daily use. As per the proposal, the new firm will have a corporate office and four zonal offices. The board of directors will have seven officials. While the Secretary, Department of Posts, will be the non-executive chairman, India Post officials of the rank of Joint Secretary will be appointed as chairman and managing director on deputation. The board will have three persons from the department and four outsiders. The Department of Company Affairs will also be represented on the board. Inter-ministerial consultations will be held with the Departments of Expenditure and Legal and Company Affairs, and their views would be incorporated in the Cabinet note. In the six months from January to June this year, the Department has issued 14 commemorative stamps.

Wipro, Infosys and IBM Responded for IPPB Back End Operations Posted: 18 Jul 2016 10:54 AM PDT At least 15 companies, including Wipro Ltd, Infosys Ltd and International Business Machines Corp. have shown an interest in handling the back end operations of India Post Payments Bank (IPPB). All of these companies have responded to a request for proposal (RFP) released by the department of posts on 1 July on its website, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. The RFP aims to select a systems integrator for delivery of business applications and IT systems for IPPB for a period of five years, and each of these companies has paid Rs.50,000 for the tender document. The department of post is expected to brief the applicants in the next few days, and the final bids are expected to come in by the beginning of August. “Both in terms of size and value, the contract is huge. Unlike any other large commercial banks, this will have to have a lot more levels of simplicity since it caters to a different category of customers,” said Ravi Trivedi, an independent consultant who was formerly with audit firm KPMG. The contract size could be roughly for at least Rs.500-700 crore, Trivedi said. The postal department will then take a couple of months for evaluation before announcing the winner, said the person aware of the issue quoted above. “Payment banks’ business models are based on technology; so, there will be high focus and spending on technology,” said Abizer Diwanji, partner and national leader, financial services, EY India. The department of posts has already awarded a contract to Infosys as its financial services integrator for implementing core banking solutions and installing automated teller machines. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd also won a six-year contract in 2013 for India Post’s IT modernization programme. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, as part of its Digital India programme, is banking on IPPB to take its schemes such as direct benefits transfers to the remotest corners of the country on the strength of India Post’s strong network of about 150,000 post offices. Like other payments banks, IPPB will target financially excluded customers such as migrant workers, low-income households and tiny businesses. It will not lend and, as a result, will be shielded from the risks that conventional banks are exposed to. “Payments banks are a very strong component of Digital India and can have a high impact and will bring down the cost of bank transactions in rural areas,” said Ashis Sanyal, a former senior director at the department of electronics and information technology. The department of posts was among the 11 entities that got an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in August 2015 to start a payments bank. Of these, Tech Mahindra Ltd; Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd promoter Dilip Shanghvi and his partners; IDFC Bank Ltd; Telenor Financial Services, and Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co.— have surrendered their licences after they discovered the business is characterized by high volume and low profit. For India Post, though, the business will be a natural extension of its work. Considering the size of India Post’s operations and its reach in the hinterland, this vertical is a lucrative proposition both for the government-owned entity and the private companies who seek to work with it. Infosys did not respond to queries sent on Thursday. “We do not comment on ongoing business pursuits,” a Wipro spokesperson said. On 8 July, the cabinet approved a proposal to set up IPPB with a corpus of Rs.800 crore. The then minister for communications and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, had said IPPB had plans to open 650 branches and will be operational by September 2017. The payments bank will begin with Rs.400 crore equity capital and a Rs.400-crore government grant. IPPB plans to set up 5,000 automated teller machines as well, Prasad had said Source : Post Bank Of India