Snail mail lives on in Internet Age: biz loves letters

If you thought letters are fast becoming history due to mobile phones and emails, think again. Postal department’s revenue from mail services has increased, thanks to business letters. More than 637 crore letters were sent out in the financial year ending March 2012.
The department earned revenue of Rs. 2,940 crore for the year ending March 2012 from its mail services, an increase of about two percent over the previous year’s sales.“Both revenue and the number of mails will increase when the data for the financial year March 2013 is out,” said an official of Posl department.

“Personal mails have declined due to increase in coverage and availability of mobile phones and also due to emails. However, letters sent out by corporates have increased,” said Kavery Banerjee, member (Technology), postal service board.

SBI, LIC and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIADI) are some of the big customers of the postal department. For example, till December 2012, the postal department had sent 18.38 crore Aadhar letters. The government is aiming at providing Aadhar cards to all the citizens.
Except Aadhar letters, the rest of business mail traffic is concentrated in big cities. The volume has increased so much that the department has set up automated mail processing centres in Delhi and Kolkata. The department plans to set up similar centres in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Source : http://www.hindustantimes.com