IRCTC, ICICI Bank tie up for e-Ticket

SILIGURI: Internet user base in India is going to cross 100 million mark by '07 end significantly increasing overall net ambiance in the country. That's what seemed to have encouraged Indian Railway to go for more and more amalga-mation of its services with Internet.

After highly successful i-ticketing and e-ticketing for the Internet users, IR is now going to start net based e-ticketing vending machines to be run by merchant's establishments in all the major towns for common mass.

E-points of sale (e-POS) machines located at merchant establishments or shopping malls in over 125 cities all over India will make e-tickets against re-served accommodations available for all. Tickets can be purchased through plastic money via payment gateways including that of ICICI bank or cash on payment of service charges as per major credit card rules.

A MoU has been signed today by Smt. R. Hasija, Group General Manager (IT), Indian Railways IRCTC and Shri S. Khandelwal, GM, ICICI Bank today to facilitate spreading of the service all around the country.

Quoting Railway Minister Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav as saying in the MoU signing ceremony, a senior NFR official said, It is an important step in the direction of making Railway tickets easily available to mass. This is a pilot project and more such facilities is in pipeline for future.

With ever growing Internet penetration in India, introduced earlier, i-Ticketing and e-Ticketing of IRCTC came out to be smash hits generating good revenue for the IR owned organization. IRCTC handles electronic book-ings for 8,500 passenger trains out of about 14,500 trains.

The e-tickets are delivered to 83 towns once the payment gateways authorize a transaction. More locations are being added. Reportedly,Broadvision Inc, a California based service provider runs the IRCTC site.

Despite good growth, there are miles for IRCTC to go. Lack of availability of its website, possibly due to shortage of bandwidth, is a common complain. Out of around 16 crore IR tickets generated a year, IRCTC sold only 25 lakh in 05-06.