Blow to IRCTC – Indian Railways to Launch its own Website for Ticket Booking Site
Not all is well between Indian Railways and IRCTC, one of the most successful ecommerce site in India [Read: 
IRCTC Transactions : 52% Jump in 1 year, 23% Failure Rate]
Last week, Indian Railways decided to break ties with IRCTC for catering contract in Rajdhani, Duronto, Shatabdi and all other mail and express trains.
The Catering Policy-2010 finalised by Railways have clearly spelt out that “Railways shall progressively take over management of all mobile catering services including base kitchens, pantry cars and all food stalls in railway premises”.[source]
And as per the latest report, Indian railways is now mulling to sell e-tickets directly from its own website, instead of using irctc.co.in to sell the ticket.
“While the PSU made a business of approximately Rs 450 crore (Rs 4.5 billion) from catering during the last financial year, it earned Rs 122 crore (Rs 1.22 billion) from selling e-tickets. Currently, thirty per cent of all rail bookings are done through IRCTC website. CRIS, the IT arm of Railways, is understood to be already working on providing e-ticketing facility on Indian Railways website.”
The decision is primarily driven by IRCTC’s lack of support, infrastructure failure – which we have been covering regularly.
And this probably explains why IRCTC forayed into air travel booking – to spread the risk of being turned obsolete.
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Related posts:
- Indian Railways API for Ticket Booking – Too strict for a startup?
- Tatkal Booking Problem Addressed Temporarily, IRCTC Bans Agents
- IRCTC Flying and Wants You To Fly- Starts Selling Air Tickets, Catering Partner for CWG
- Indian Railways Clocks Rs 3.7Billion in e-transaction, partners with ClearTrip for Hotel Booking
- Wake up call for OTAs – IRCTC is making 50 Lakh a day by selling Air Tickets
in my mind few questions hitting me up
1) if e ticketing moved to railways main website, the agents who are now connected to irctc nationwide and also OTA’s will continue with railways or need to pay and activate again?
2) If Indian railways started e ticketing service, what will be with IRCTC, train E- ticketing and Air ticketing or only Air Ticketing
3) What are the other services that indian railways can provide, is is Great Customer Support??
4)What other services can OTA’s and other agent get otherthan what they get now with IRCTC.
and many more, website security, customer support, any new features to OTA’s, IRCTC Agents etc etc
Thanks & Regards
Sai Pothuri
?Sigh! Given the state of Indian Govt. websites, any reasons to believe that Indian Railways will do a better job than IRCTC?!
Lets hope Railway do it better than IRCTC.
I am using IRCTC website from last 3 yrs. I am happy abt the services except that sometimes it is very slow n will not be able to book the tickets. It is good if we get chance to book in IRCTC, indianrailways or any other channels like bookmytrip so that it will not be too much overload on one webiste considering the Indian poppulation and the internet users have increased here. Indian railways can have a look to increase more online channels, portals, websites to book the tickets.
super
?