Steena Joy – Mumbai
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the railways, plans to get into the budget hotel segment, develop an app for booking meals and set up Executive Lounges at railway stations. In an exclusive interview, Dr A K Manocha, CMD, IRCTC, said that the Indian Railways is on track to increase its reach. He opined, “Our focus is on two major targets: we hope to take Internet penetration on our site from the current 50-60 per cent to 75-80 per cent preferably even 105 per cent. And our turnover from 20 to 30 fold. We have seen an 110 per cent increase in ticketing of the luxury train, Maharajas’ Express from 314 in June last year to 742 tickets this year. Secondly, once we get the requisite permissions, we plan to build budget hotels, get into the entertainment business, organise events and cultural shows, etc. We want to get into anything that will increase traffic to our site. We will also invite partners with whom we can work this out.” He believes that there exists huge potential for medical tourism in the country. “We can compete with the world as we have large medical facilities. And rail connectivity is good to push this segment. But some loose ends still have to be tied up. We can take care of the logistics but we have to tie up with hospitals to make the procedure seamless,” explained Manocha. He added, “We also plan to manage restaurants. The first one we have taken up is Swagat restaurant at Hotel Janpath in New Delhi. We are also planning budget hotels, maybe the first one at Bhubaneshwar and e-wheelchair services at 24 stations. We just launched the e-wheelchair service recently at Delhi. This is a part of CSR initially, but later we plan to embrace it commercially too.”
Speaking about the rail-airline scheme, Manocha informed, “Our scheme of getting airline seats for waitlisted passengers is now applicable on Go Air and SpiceJet . We are in talks with more airlines and will finalise the same in 15 to 20 days.” New plans include setting up 24 Executive Lounges at select railway stations. Manocha revealed, “We have floated tenders for the same. Locations we are looking at are Jaipur, Vijaywada, Agra, Kolkata (Howrah and Chalsa), Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Secunderabad, etc. The lounges are estimated to cost Rs one to two crore depending on the location. Our target is 500 Executive Lounges. The old policy was not favourable to us. For the lounge at Delhi, the rental was very exorbitant. So we have to look at viability too. Now the policy has changed. Earlier the lease tenure was five years now it is 12 years.“
In 2010, the Railway Board decided to take away the catering business from IRCTC because it felt that the service was not up to the quality mark. Commenting on whether the mandate will be returned to IRCTC, Manocha said, “The ministry has to decide. We have entered in a small way doing e-catering on trains that have no pantry cars. Meals can be pre-booked online using the ticket PNR and it will be supplied to the passenger on his seat. If we get the permission to do it at the stations, the potential is much greater. We can do it through food aggregators. We also plan to develop an app for booking meals. We will be installing water vending machines at stations soon.”
About IRCTC’s central kitchen in Noida, Delhi, Manocha said that currently food production in the state-of-the-art facility is 8,000 to 10,000 meals per day; of which 4,000 to 5,000 are corporate meals and around 6,000 are supplied in trains. “We need to increase these numbers but railways are rigid about their rates as they have to keep it user friendly for the passenger. So these are constraints. We are actually under operating the facility,” he opined.