12IB-029: Why and how IRCTC made for foray into E-business and challenges lying ahead

Finally one of the most congested site in India, IRCTC is making foray into the world of E-Business.

Partnership with Yebhi

The state-owned organisation has partnered with Shop Online Trading, a subsidiary of online retail venture Yebhi to launch the online retail venture.

So first question that comes into mind is Why getting into E-business....??

1) With approximately over 1.2 million daily visitors, 180 million transactions annually, 20 million registered users the idea is to take the advantage of such a large user base and increase average revenue per user.

2) Majority of users who come to IRCTC are non-regular users of Internet and for them IRCTC is the site they trust. They make online payments for tickets and would not mind paying for products and deals that are featured on IRCTC website.

3) From infrastructure perspective as well, IRCTC has lot of spare capacity during non-peak hours and offering products online will increase the utilization without increase in cost and adding more revenue.

Challenges ahead.....

IRCTC has already been facing a lot of criticism from the customers for being unable to handle the amount of traffic it gets. 

Adding to the fact that the new category added could push the traffic levels further, it still remains to be seen how IRCTC plans to handle the same.

Submitted by:

Neelansh Gupta

12IB-029