BENGALURU: Bengaluru is set to be Karnataka’s pilot site for India Post’s “Digi Pin”, which is being devised as a 10-digit alphanumeric key that is going to replace the system of traditional pin codes by making the mechanism more localised and accurate. According to P Guruprasad, the assistant director of India Post’s Bengaluru HQ Region, the pilot experimentation may start rolling out in the city in the next two months.
Currently, the national project is at its infancy, with only India Post officials being privy to the extent and scope of its operations, both of which are in the process of being refined. The Digi Pin will hyperlocalise a delivery destination to an area spanning 100 square metres, allowing for pinpoint deliveries, according Guruprasad.
“This is just the introductory phase, where we have a link that generates a Digi Pin for every user. In two months, as part of the second phase, test deliveries will start in Bengaluru along with other metropolitan cities in the country, through India Post’s partnerships with courier services,” said Guruprasad.
The third phase is about five months to a semester away, where rural districts in Karnataka will start acting as pilot sites as well. After this last phase of testing, as Guruprasad explained, the service as a finished product should start to go live in April 2027.
“The delivery personnel as of now have been given only a very brief and preliminary idea of the mechanism. They will be trained as the product develops. When fully operational, every India Post deliveryperson will have to be familiarised with the Digi Pins of their respective beat,” Guruprasad said.
The assistant director cited the mechanism’s restriction to two-dimensionality as a possible area to improve upon, given the issue of multi-storeyed segregation of addresses and destinations not being accounted for. He said that work was underway to incorporate the segregation, by virtue of which different pins can be generated for different floors of the same building, for instance. Once this system is up and running, it would mean the death knell for pin codes, which will be phased out and made functionally obsolete.