Who decided your PINCODE?

It is almost every day, that we pen down or type our zip code or postal code. It could be to mention our address for a Meesho order or maybe while ordering on Swiggy or Zomato? But have you ever stopped and wondered, how zip codes or postal codes were decided? Who decided 400050 is the postal code for Bandra West in Mumbai? Let us decipher this Morse code.

So in India, PIN codes, postal codes, zip codes, whatever you may want to call them, are a 6-digit combination of numbers. So PIN, which stands for Postal Index Number is the post office numbering code by the Postal Service of India. This system was introduced on August 15, 1972, and each of the six digits has a particular meaning.

So let’s start with the first digit then. The very first digit indicates the part of the country the post is addressed to. In India, there are 9 PIN regions out of which 8 are geographical locations and 9 are specially used for army postal service. For instance, In India, Numbers 1 and 2 are assigned to the North, 5 and 6 to the South, and so on. The second digit indicates the sub-region. Thus the first two digits of the PIN identify a particular circle. For example, for the posts to reach Delhi it’s 11. To Maharashtra, it is 40-44. The third digit indicates the sorting district within the region. Finally, the last 3 digits designate the specific post office within the district.

Although the calculations sound a little confusing, the meaning and purpose of the number seem easy to understand. And so, after today, you can easily look at a pincode and be able to tell which part of India it is from. But that’s just in India. If you look at the UK, the postcode consist of 5-7 alphanumeric characters and are separated into two parts by a single space. If you look at the US, the current postal codes in the United States range from 00001 – 99950. And, that brings me to our final point. That’s brings me to my final question then, can the same pincode exists in two different parts of the world? That’s a question to be answered later sometime. If you liked this blog, let us know in the comments below. We will be back with more such interesting blogs.