Odisha launches a dedicated portal for home delivery of liquor

In view of the huge demand for home delivery of liquor during the COVID crisis, the state-owned OSBC has developed a portal which will act as a digital platform to bring all the retailers and consumers together to ensure smooth and hassle free activities.

The portal was launched to further streamline the process and to bring an ease of convenience for consumers and retailers as well as for the purpose of transparency and building accountability in the whole process, an official of Odisha State Beverage Corporation (OSBC) said.

Earlier, the state government on May 24 had allowed home delivery of liquor to the existing "on" and "off" excise licensees. Home delivery is made by retailers directly and also through agencies like food aggregators and standard technology platforms.

Till May 31, 1,351 retailers participated in home delivery of liquor throughout the state. This apart four aggregators namely Zomato, Swiggy, Hip Bar & Dunia online Pvt. Ltd. have also been granted NOC to operate in the state, the official said.

Of the 2,46,852 home delivery orders received till Sunday, 2,42,038 orders have been executed by these retailers as well as aggregators. The number and volume of home delivery have been rising steadily in all the districts, the official said.

As per the present arrangement, in case of home delivery of liquor directly by retailers, they are displaying their phone/mobile number in front of their shops for wider publicity and the consumers can place orders by dialing these numbers.

The retailers can execute the home delivery through their own staff. They also maintain a record of names, address and other details of the consumers and the products delivered to them. An invoice needs to be generated by them for each order given details, he said.

The official said the portal can be accessed at http://www.osbc.co.in where the link is available for visiting the login page. The first time visitors need to register themselves for accessing the portal. The portal is mobile compatible and the link can also be stored on the home screen by choosing the feature "add to home screen" for easy access.

The portal also provides list of all the retailers within the district at one location and also the list of all the brands with MRPs available with the retailers. With this feature the consumer need not directly call the retailer but can place orders by selecting the retailer of this choice and also the brand which he/she wants to buy.

The portal can generate a challan containing the details with MRP and delivery charges. For the retailers, they can aggregate all the orders at one place which makes it convenient to them for handle.

Since all the orders gets registered in the portal, it automatically generates the record of each transaction and frees him from the hassle of maintaining another register.

The system also generates e-Invoice which can act as an e-pass to facilitate movement. SMS alerts are also received by retailers and consumers at various stages.

"More additional features like integration with payment gateways and UPIs, capturing feedback about service delivery from customers, converting the portal into a mobile application by integrating various other services and others have been planned," the official said.