Bharat Petroleum ties up with E-Charge

In its effort to offer more value-added services to its customers through its retail outlets, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) has tied up with E-Charge Tech Private Limited to distribute electronically pre-paid products like mobile cards, internet cards and calling cards.

Disclosing this at a press conference here, S Varadarajan, head of BPCL retail sales operations in south, said that BPCL was the first company in India to electronically distribute the pre-paid products.

The products to be made available at the 250 'In & Out' stores at BPCL outlets can be bought for any denomination at any time, he said.

Varadarajan said BPCL was planning to set up 150 new 'In & Out' stores during this financial year and pre-paid products would be offered at all these stores gradually.

He said there were 20 'In & Out' stores in Andhra Pradesh and 10 more would be added during this fiscal. Praveen Dhabhai, regional head, electronic distribution division of E-Charge, said that the company had developed a solution 'e-charge' for electronic distribution of pre-paid products that replaces the current physical scratch card distribution.

The new mode of distribution reduces the cost of card production and labour costs. It also reduces inventory problems and the time taken to replenish the inventory and out-of-stock problems would cease to exist for the sellers. E-Charge is a subsidiary of Mercantile Pacific Group, Australia.

Mercantile is a complete system and service provider, offering electronic delivery system for the pre-paid product industry through electronic terminals.

New services like bill payments and insurance premium payment would be launched by E-Charge in India soon, Dhabhai said. E-Charge is initially offering mobile pre-paid cards of Hutch, IDEA and Airtel, Internet as well as calling cards of Tata Indicom and VSNL.

The company would soon enter into an agreement with BSNL for offering its pre-paid products as well, Dhabhai said.