Meghdoot is title of a play in Sanskrit written by Kalidasa. It literally means the cloud-messenger.  Meghdoot Card service is introduced by Post Department on September 2, 2002. Meghdoot Card is priced at 25 paise which is half the cost of the regular post card. Here the writing space, available on the address side of the regular post card, is made available for advertising in multicolor. The rate of the advertisement is Rs.2 per card and the minimum order for print is 100,000 cards. Meghdoot is printed by Security Printing Press at Hyderabad in sheets of 8 cards, although some have been supplied to post offices by the press in sheets of 4 and pairs of 2 cards.

Being a postal stationery article with an advertisement, its area of distribution is determined by the advertiser, as its design and copy. In addition to the post offices in the area of its distribution the Meghdoot is also made available in limited quantity of 2000 cards at select 8 philatelic bureaus that handle postal stationery, namely Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, and Mumbai.

The printing of Meghdoot were decentralized to Circle level on October 15, 2003 enabling India Post’s 23 postal circles to directly place their order on the press. However all other postal stationery articles with advertisements such as regular Post Card, Inland Letter Card, Aerogramme, and Envelopes continue to be printed by the order of the national Postal Directorate, New Delhi. The decentralization has added to the difficulties in procuring the necessary information on these cards even very basic data such as date of issue.