The next time your friendly neighbourhood postman from the Speed Post knocks at the

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door, do not be surprised if he flaunts a PDA (personal digital assistant) handheld device to record the delivery. As per the Indian Postal department’s plans, he may soon be multi-tasking, rather than merely delivering you the ubiquitous letter.

The process of providing the postmen in-charge of handling Speed Post documents with PDA handsets has started in right earnest. The Maharashtra circle kick-started the process by calling in tenders in March this year and the commercial bids were opened on May 22, 2009.

A Chennai-based company, eLogistics has emerged the L1 in the bid to deploy 3,000 PDA handsets. While 12 bidders were said to have participated, six of them were short-listed for the technical bid and four qualified for the commercial bid level.

The postal department is keen to increase the role of the postman, till now the pointsman for delivery of posts and money-orders. Besides plans for selling postal stamps and other services of the department, he may soon be using the PDA handset to register the receiver’s signature of registered posts.

In minutes, this will be uploaded to the central server, which will enable a sender as far away in the US to check the deliver status online.

The Maharashtra circle of the postal department will be the first one to implement this and it will cover both Maharashtra and Goa.

Following the initiative by the Maharashtra circle, the Delhi and Chennai circles have followed suit and have initiated the tender process to implement this PDA initiative.

“The plan is to cover around 45,000 postmen all over the country handling the Speed Post documents initially. The tasks to be undertaken by the postmen will increase going forward to bring in complete transparency in terms of delivery,” an official with the department of posts in Chennai said.

However, the process of implementation is taking time. “Even the Maharashtra circle, which had opened the commercial bid on May 22, is yet to place the order for the required equipment with the successful bidder of its tender,” he said.

While the Maharashtra order is worth Rs 40 crore, spread over five years, the move overall offers a Rs 500 crore opportunity to the domestic players focused on this vertical.