After losing catering biz, IRCTC set to lose in tickets

Railway budget has become an unwelcoming event for Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). While the last year’s budget had come at the expense of losing its catering business, this time it assured a significant cut in its ticketing business.

Railway minister Mamata Banerjee had announced a new portal for e-ticketing to be launched by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS). The new website may take away 25 per cent of IRCTC business, whose 30-40 per cent business comes from tickets.

“Financial year 2011-12 is going to be tough. Catering and e-ticketing have been our main source of income. With catering business worth Rs 300 crore gone, we are already feeling the pinch. Now, new portal will cut our share in ticketing too,” said Rakesh Tandon, IRCTC MD. FC had reported before the last year’s railway budget that the ministry was planning to develop an e-ticket website. “We have been trying to convince IRCTC to bring down the surcharges. However, it did not. So, we thought of creating competition,” Vivek Sahai, chairman of railway board said.

“We are trying to get into cricket and air ticketing. We have to explore other businesses. Tourism, which so far has been only 10-15 per cent of total business, needs to grow. We are tying up with state governments and travel companies to get bigger,” Tandon said.