Around 20% of train ticket inventory has unfolded for online booking within months of resumption of train offerings in the northern and southern states, stated a top executive of on-line train monitoring and booking platform RailYatri.
Indian Railways had suspended all passenger trains after the national lockdown from March 25. However, it resumed offerings in a staggered manner, with Shramik Special trains, which was generally aimed toward supporting stranded migrant people reach their domestic states from May 1.
By September, more than 230 special trains have become operational, which include long-route trains on Delhi-Bengaluru, Delhi-Indore, Yesvantpur-Gorakhpur, Puri-Ahmedabad sections.
RailYatri’s on-line train booking platform is presently seeing around 2,500-3,000 each day bookings, that is around 50% of the demand it had earlier than March. The startup works immediately with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of Indian Railways to listing train tickets immediately on its platform.
“We (RailYatri train bookings) have recovered to about 50-55% of the bookings that we used to process before March 2020. This is because only about 15-20% of the trains’ inventory (for online bookings has opened up). We used to process around 5,500-6000 daily bookings (for trains) before March,” Manish Rathi, chief executive, RailYatri said in an interview.
The startup, that is funded through Blume Ventures, Omidyar Network, and Nandan Nilekani, additionally released a bus reserving option last year. It additionally gives train ticket PNR predictions, just like different tech startups along with Confirmtkt, Railofy, and IRCTC, which released a prediction feature on its on-line ticket booking platform in May 2018.
“For long-distance travelers, there shouldn’t be any friction to move from trains to buses (and vice versa), especially in a country like India, and unless this kind of integration isn’t possible, we will have long waitlists on trains. We also have to ensure than the inter-city and inter-state buses do not run in half the capacity to fix the waitlist problems on trains,” Rathi said.
