MUMBAI: Revenue from online ticketing on Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp crossed the Rs 20,000-crore mark during the year to March 2015, nearly double the turnover of India's largest online retailer Flipkart. IRCTC generated Rs 20,620 crore, or nearly $3 billion, through online ticket sales in the last financial year, up 34% from a year ago when it sold tickets worth Rs 15,410 crore.
But unlike loss-making marketplaces, IRCTC posted profit after tax of Rs 130 crore, up from Rs 72 crore in the previous year. "Bulk of the sales may be attributed to IRCTC's rapid growth in e-ticketing which has been due to its interface and setting up of a very robust process. Capacity enhancement was done to book 7,200 tickets per minute as against 2,000 tickets per minute in the existing system," said Sandip Dutta, public relations manager at IRCTC, which set a record in April when it booked 13.4 lakh etickets on a single day. That compares with 27 tickets a day when it began in 2002. In fact, 55 per cent of all rail tickets sold are booked online.
The government-owned portal posted a 19% increase in income at Rs 1,141 crore, which mainly includes service charges on tickets, sales of Rail Neer water, onboard catering services and licence fees from outsourced catering vendors.
This is similar to online marketplaces where sales don't include actual goods sold but instead count commission from sellers and revenue from advertisements on their ecommerce sites. IRCTC's combined income from commissions on ticketing, travel and tourism was Rs 670 crore, a tad higher than Flipkart's turnover of Rs 659 crore earned from shipping fee and selling commission on its e-commerce portal.
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But unlike loss-making marketplaces, IRCTC posted profit after tax of Rs 130 crore, up from Rs 72 crore in the previous year. "Bulk of the sales may be attributed to IRCTC's rapid growth in e-ticketing which has been due to its interface and setting up of a very robust process. Capacity enhancement was done to book 7,200 tickets per minute as against 2,000 tickets per minute in the existing system," said Sandip Dutta, public relations manager at IRCTC, which set a record in April when it booked 13.4 lakh etickets on a single day. That compares with 27 tickets a day when it began in 2002. In fact, 55 per cent of all rail tickets sold are booked online.
The government-owned portal posted a 19% increase in income at Rs 1,141 crore, which mainly includes service charges on tickets, sales of Rail Neer water, onboard catering services and licence fees from outsourced catering vendors.
This is similar to online marketplaces where sales don't include actual goods sold but instead count commission from sellers and revenue from advertisements on their ecommerce sites. IRCTC's combined income from commissions on ticketing, travel and tourism was Rs 670 crore, a tad higher than Flipkart's turnover of Rs 659 crore earned from shipping fee and selling commission on its e-commerce portal.
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