Adani's Trainman Not A Competition, Clarifies IRCTC Over E-Ticketing Business Row

In response to the Trainman vs IRCTC row, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation has issued a notice. Clarifying that Adani’s Trainman is not a ‘competition’, IRCTC has issued a detailed statement explaining the finer nuances of the e-ticketing business row.

The official statement from IRCTC read, “IRCTC has entered into partnerships with many agencies under schemes like B2B, EGovernance, B2C etc.to complement IRCTC’s efforts to reach out to citizens for ease of ticketing and there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents.”

Explaining the e-ticketing business segment, IRCTC said that around 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked on daily basis in Indian Railways. Out of these almost 81 per cent are e-tickets and booked through IRCTC itself. Hence, there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents, including Trainman.

The official statement also added that the Adani-led Trainman, being a B2C partner of IRCTC contributes 0.13 per cent of total reserved ticketing. Since these firms are integrated with IRCTC, overall, they help the customers in a smooth ticketing process.

“Further, B2C firms are especially integrated with IRCTC business to provide reserved eticketing services to customers directly through their websites or mobile Apps through IRCTC API. Trainman is one of the 32 B2C partners of IRCTC contributing 0.13% of total reserved ticketing. Its acquisition by any other agency will not change the application of the extant B2C policy in anyway. All the integrations and operations will continue to be done through IRCTC only as is being done presently,” IRCTC said in the official statement. 

The development comes in response to the announcement made on Friday when Adani Enterprises said that it would acquire 100 per cent of Stark Enterprises, the operator of train ticket booking platform Trainman.