IRCTC leaves behind other eCommerce players with a revenue worth 20,620 cr in FY14-15

Amidst the race of eCommerce companies to get profitability, the state operated Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp (IRCTC) has significantly managed to scale up its revenue from the online website. This is nearly twice as much of Flipkart which is amongst India’s largest online marketplaces.

IRCTC has managed to nab Rs. 20,620 crore from its online ticket sales in the last fiscal which is almost 34 percent higher than the previous year. IRCTC has also posted profits after tax of Rs. 130 crore, nearly 90 percent higher than Rs. 72 crore that it posted an year ago.

IRCTC’s income from service charges on tickets, sales of Rail Neer Water, onboard catering services and license fees increased by 19 percent. It’s combined income from commissions on ticketing, travel and tourism was Rs 670 crore.

With vigorous efforts to enhance its user experience, IRCTC has revamped its entire website lately. It has increased its capacity of booking tickets from 2,000 tickets per minute to 7,200 tickets per minute. The rate of failure in ticket bookings have also come down to a large extent. The revamping also includes tie ups with many other online retailers such as Swiggy and Foodpanda. Talking about the same with Retailer Media, Anushree Srivastava, Deputy General Manager/IT/New Ventures, IRCTC said, “With such huge and active user-base, we thought of monetising it to promote tourism. We thought why not try and sell something which is an added value to the rail customers such as tourism packages, hotels, cabs etc. Hence we have joined forces with many eCommerce companies to promote certain products or services that might be relevant to the traveler.” 

In 2014, on March 19th, IRCTC had created a record of booking 5.8 lakh tickets on a single day and this year they bettered that record by more than double.