Cargo service helps APSRTC reduce losses

Tirupati: The cargo service taken up by the APSRTC is giving the much-needed fillip to the state transporter to improve its revenue with zero investment, helping it to some extent tide over its mounting losses. The RTC, which is reeling under losses, in an effort to get additional income from its existing resources introduced the cargo service.

First it tied up with courier company ANL since 1978, which allowed the RTC only 20 per cent of the revenue from the parcel service. But later, RTC took up the parcel service on its own in August 2017 with Krishna Info Tech acting as service provider who get 20 of the revenue leaving 80 per cent to RTC.

This proved a turning point for the RTC for getting more revenue which was evident with the corporation making Rs 172 crore business in 2022-23 (till February) and is all set to touch Rs 200 crore mark soon, providing a sizable income to the cash strapped RTC.

In Tirupati district, the revenue through the parcel service is Rs 3 lakh daily while the region targeted to do Rs 4 lakh business daily to achieve an annual turnover of Rs 15 crore, said assistant traffic manager (commercial) G L B Subbarao. The district daily business was just Rs 30,000 when RTC took over the cargo service in 2017, but within six years increased it 10 times, he said informing that this was made possible by adding more and more facilities to the customers ensuring them cost effective, dependable and faster delivery. The CCTV cameras which were installed at storage points in the bus stations coupled with 'tracking facility' ensure safe delivery of parcels and also help to avoid any delay in the shipment of the parcels while the insurance cover assures the customer adequate compensation in case of any loss of property, he explained.

Subbarao further said in the beginning there were limited booking counters and no door delivery and later on, booking points were increased from 100 in 2017 to 274 now covering most of the towns in AP and in Chennai city while door delivery was also introduced in September last year boosting the RTC cargo service.

Soon, the service will be extended to Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Tirumala to widen the customer base to increase revenue, he said, adding that plans are afoot to receive parcels-covers up to 50 kg from the customer's house which would be a game changer.

At officials' side, he said district public transport officer T Chengal Reddy and others were periodically reviewing the performance, fine tuning the service and taking aggressive promotion resulting in Tirupati district in the top three among the AP districts..