August 2 2018: Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, has launched the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) at an event in Delhi yesterday, simulcast to over 3000 locations across the country. The bank has opened in 650 districts on the opening day.
The Prime Minister said that the postman has long been a respected and accepted person in the villages. The postman remains, despite the advent of modern technology.. He said that there are over 150,000 post offices and over 300,000 postmen or “grameen dak sevaks” who are connected to the people of the country. Now they are being empowered with smartphones and digital devices to provide financial services.
The PM said it will enable money transfer, transfer of government benefits, bill payments and other services such as investment and insurance. Postmen would deliver these services at the doorstep, facilitate digital transactions, and help deliver the benefits of schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, which provide assistance to farmers.
He expressed confidence that IPPB shall reach over 150,000 post offices across the country within the next few months.
Sify network technology harnessed
The Department of Post turned to Sify Technologies Limited as its as Network Integrator & Network Service Provider for this project, across 650 branches of IPPB and 3250 access points
Sify was mandated to build and connect endpoints, spanning both sorting and administration offices. This resulted in Sify building the largest integrated MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network in India for the postal services. The total scale of the project in Phase 1 involved connecting 28,000+ urban & Semi urban post offices.
Resting on Sify’s MPLS network backbone, IPPB will go now live with 650 branches, 3250 access points co-located at post offices and around 11,000 gramin dak sevaks and postmen providing doorstep banking services.
IPPB is starting operations with 170 million accounts and gradually 155,000 access points in the country will be enabled to offer banking services.
Says Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies: “A proud moment for us and a coming-of-age project for Sify that firmly established us as India’s most comprehensive ICT Solutions and Services player. This was not just about bringing banking to millions of under-banked Indians. It was about giving them the same opportunity as everybody else; a crucial enabler of the Prime Minister’s vision for Digital India. We are immensely proud that, as a pioneer of Network and Data connectivity in India, we played a crucial role in this financial inclusion revolution.”
Sify is the largest ICT service provider, systems integrator, and all-in-one network solutions company on the Indian subcontinent