Daily Archives: September 2, 2014

World's largest postal service, India Post has tied up with online marketplace major Snapdeal to sell stamps to reach out to larger audiences.

Under the partnership, targeted especially at philately enthusiasts, Snapdeal will sell stamps and collections priced between Rs 300-5,500.

"While stamp collection has been a popular hobby, we found consumers who said they found it difficult to buy stamps.

India Post has an amazing collection of stamps that we feel we our consumers will be delighted to have," Snapdeal co-founder and COO Rohit Bansal told PTI.

Also, with Snapdeal's extensive reach, India Post will be able to reach a large number of customers, he added.

"Miniature works of art, documenting human history and endeavours, cultures, traditions and national heritage, postage stamps can be window to the world.

The partnership with Snapdeal will enhance the ease of purchasing philatelic stamps and products on the Internet at the click of a button," India Posts Secretary Kaveri Banerjee said.

The first India Postage Stamps were issued in 1854, which bore the inscription 'India Postage'. The first independence stamps, issued in 1947 (three in number), depicted the Ashoka Pillar, the Indian National Flag and an Aircraft. Since then, India has issued more than 3,000 stamps.

There are 68 Philatelic Bureaux and 1,111 philatelic counters in the country.

"We are increasingly working with government agencies to help them reap benefits of eCommerce. With this partnership, they will be able to reach out to a larger audience," he said.

Original post:
India Post ties up with Snapdeal to sell stamps

World's largest postal service India Post has tied up with online marketplace firm Snapdeal to sell stamps to reach out to larger audiences.

Under the partnership, targeted especially at philately enthusiasts, Snapdeal will sell stamps and collections priced between Rs 300-5,500.

"While stamp collection has been a popular hobby, we found consumers who said they found it difficult to buy stamps. India Post has an amazing collection of stamps that we feel we our consumers will be delighted to have," Snapdeal co-founder and COO Rohit Bansal told PTI.

Also, with Snapdeal's extensive reach, India Post will be able to reach a large number of customers, he added.

"Miniature works of art, documenting human history and endeavours, cultures, traditions and national heritage, postage stamps can be window to the world. The partnership with Snapdeal will enhance the ease of purchasing philatelic stamps and products on the Internet at the click of a button," India Posts Secretary Kaveri Banerjee said.

The first India Postage Stamps were issued in 1854, which bore the inscription 'India Postage'. The first independence stamps, issued in 1947 (three in number), depicted the Ashoka Pillar, the Indian National Flag and an Aircraft.

Since then, India has issued more than 3,000 stamps.

There are 68 Philatelic Bureaux and 1,111 philatelic counters in the country.

"We are increasingly working with government agencies to help them reap benefits of eCommerce. With this partnership, they will be able to reach out to a larger audience," he said.

India has the largest postal network in the world with over 1.55 lakh post offices (as on March 2009) of which 1.39 lakh are in rural areas.

More:
Snapdeal to sell stamps, ties up with India Post

Image: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

By Seth Fiegerman2014-09-02 13:48:20 UTC

It's the end of an era for The Washington Post.

The Post announced Tuesday that its publisher Katharine Weymouth is stepping down after 17 years with the company and a lifetime of having the paper in her blood. It was Weymouth's great-grandfather who bought The Post 81 years ago; the family has served as stewards of the publication ever since.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO who acquired The Post for $250 million almost a year ago, praised Weymouth's leadership and thanked her for "agreeing to stay on" in the role of publisher during his first year as owner.

"I am so grateful to Katharine for agreeing to stay on as Publisher this past year," Bezos said in a statement. "She has successfully led many new initiatives and assured that the first ownership change of this great institution in 80 years has been done smoothly and without skipping a beat."

Bezos is replacing Weymouth with Fred Ryan, the founding CEO and president of Politico, a political news site founded by former Post employees to challenge The Post and others. Ryan previously worked in the White House during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

In a memo to employees, Weymouth noted her "mixed emotions" on leaving, but stressed that The Post is in a strong position. "Now it is time for new leadership," she said in the memo."With Jeff Bezos as our new owner, you are already seeing an infusion of energy and ideas. This is just the beginning of a wonderful new chapter for The Post."

The team at The Post has been working to improve its desktop and mobile properties and announced last month that it had record online traffic in the month of July.

Here is the full memo Weymouth sent to Washington Post employees:

Read more here:
Washington Post Publisher Steps Down a Year After Bezos Acquisition

When my wife and I were young parents in the late 1970s and I was working as a Metro reporter at The Washington Post covering Prince Georges County and Maryland politics, we had a favorite saying we would utter whenever we bought new shoes and clothes for our two gradeschool kids: Thank you, Mrs. Graham.

As the years and decades went by, my scrapbooks and boxes of journalistic stuff included various little notes written in blue ink on Washington Post memo pads. All of us received them, no doubtevery reporter who worked there. They were written by Don Graham, who had succeeded his mother as publisher. Words of praise and encouragement about a story. It could be a big story or a small one, on A1 or buried in the Metro section, or Sports, or Business or Style, but Don had read it. He read everything, every day, and if he liked it he sent along a note.

They would land in your box in the mailroom in a dark, tan interoffice envelope that was long and thin, or, if you were a correspondent elsewhere in the country or the world, through the postal service in a small, white Washington Post envelope with his name scrawled above the papers logo. Some people called them Donnie Grams. I always called them Graham Grams. They were vital.

Now the last string connecting the Graham family to the Post has been cut with the announcement on Tuesday that Katharine Weymouth, Mrs. Grahams granddaughter and Don Grahams niece, would be resigning as publisher. No surprise. We could all see it coming from the day last August when Don Graham sold the family newspaper to the king of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. His new guy seems generic. Fred Ryan. Came out of Southern Cal. Worked for Reagan. Helped found Politico.

I have no idea what the future promises from this team of Bezos and Ryan. I believe Don when he says that he sold the paper he loved in order to save it. I believe that Katharine stayed on for the last year to make the transition to the new world as smooth as possible. I believe that it is possible that Bezos and Ryan might figure out how to transform the Post into a profitable digital enterprise that can take on a mighty global mission.

I understand the inevitability of change. For the past few years Ive been researching a book on Detroit, and no subject could more impress upon me the cycles of life and death, composition and decomposition, decay and rebirth, than the fortunes and misfortunes of that great city. Some change is unavoidable, some is necessary, some the unfortunate result of mistakes and misunderstandings and human failings. Some of what has happened at the Post was caused by forces far larger than an individual newspaper, and some was the result of decisions made by the Graham family over the years. So be it.

Ive often said of myself and other journalists that the obvious becomes obvious only when it is obvious. It took many of us a long time to adjust to the transformation of our industry, perhaps too long. And now, for my own part, I can say that it took me a long time to comprehend that the Graham era at the Post is finally and fully over.

As much as I love the Post and so many of the people who work there, the truth is that I care less about the saving of it than I thought I would. I am not even sure what saving it means. What I care about more is the loss, the ineluctable sense of something that cannot be replaced by profits or clicks. Maybe clicks are the new Graham grams. How many hundreds or thousands of electronic readers clicked on your story? Whether they liked it or not is irrelevant, and lord knows you are not likely to wade into the profane cesspool of the comments section to try to find out. And I doubt that a Ryan Gram or Bezos Gram, as unlikely as they are, would fill the void, even if delivered by drone. The Post under the Grahams was maternal and paternal and uneven and beautifully flawed. But most of all, it was deeply human.

David Maraniss is a book author and associate editor at The Washington Post

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A future without Graham Grams