Shipping economics for a seller doing 50 orders a month
At low volume, private couriers will not give you a rate and the counter queue eats your afternoon. Here is what the third option actually looks like.
Fifty orders a month is an awkward volume. It is enough that going to the post office and filling in forms by hand is a real cost in time. It is not enough for a private courier to offer you a contract rate worth having, and their list rates on low volume are not competitive.
What the post office actually costs you
The postage is only part of it. Counter booking means writing out the address details for each parcel, waiting while the clerk books each one individually, and carrying away a receipt you then have to reconcile against your orders by hand.
At fifty parcels that is several hours a month of work that produces nothing, plus the reconciliation errors that come with it.
What changes with online booking
The addresses are typed once, at the point where you already have them from the order. Labels and a manifest print together. The counter visit becomes one hand-over of a stack of pre-booked parcels against one sheet, which takes minutes rather than an hour.
And the rate is the contractual tariff rather than the counter tariff, which on a fifty-parcel month is a meaningful number on its own.
Coverage is the other half
India Post reaches effectively every deliverable pincode in the country, including places private networks either do not serve or serve through a third-party handover with no visibility. If a measurable share of your orders go to smaller towns, that coverage is worth more than a marginally better rate on metro lanes.
Pick the right service per order
The largest single saving available to a small seller is not switching platforms — it is not defaulting everything to the express service. Above a kilogram, the standard parcel lane is substantially cheaper, and most orders are not time-critical.
Services
- Business Parcel — The lower-cost parcel lane, at contractual rates.
- Speed Post — India Post’s fastest lane, at contractual rates.
Main pages
Daakly is operated by Yahatech Solutions Private Limited, 51/D Goyal Complex, Opp. Ashima Tower, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380054, India. Email team@daakly.com.
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