Swiggy To Provide Food Delivery Service on Indian Railways Starting 12 March

Starting March 12, Swiggy will deliver to passengers travelling via Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada

The service is likely to expand to over 50 stations in the coming weeks

Swiggy, India’s leading online food ordering and delivery platform, and the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) have signed a Memorandum of understanding (MoU) to deliver pre-ordered food on trains. The MoU was exchanged between Mr Sanjay Kumar Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, IRCTC and Mr Rohit Kapoor, CEO, Swiggy Food Marketplace, in the presence of senior officials from both organisations.

As part of the MoU, Swiggy will deliver food from its extensive restaurant network to passengers on the Indian railways starting with Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. The service is likely to expand to 59 additional city stations in the coming weeks.

Speaking about partnership, Mr Sanjay Kumar Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, IRCTC, said, “At IRCTC our focus has always been to explore new ways to make train journeys comfortable and convenient for the billions of passengers aboard the Indian railways every year. This partnership with Swiggy will bring more convenience and food options to our passengers, making their journeys more memorable.”

“Swiggy’s mission is to bring convenience to the lives of consumers. The Indian Railways are the lifeline of our nation, transporting more than 8 billion passengers annually. If during these rail journeys, which traverse across states and districts, one has the option to order meals to explore the culinary diversity of India, it would make the experience more convenient and enjoyable, and add to the overall vividness of the train travel,” said Mr Rohit Kapoor, CEO, Food Marketplace, Swiggy.

One of the challenges encountered by travellers during extended journeys is the paucity of diverse culinary options. Through this integration, passengers aboard designated trains now have the option to savour good-quality, warm meals delivered right to their seats, thereby transforming their travel into a convenient and delightful culinary experience.

"IRCTC and Swiggy collaboration is natural in several ways. Both the organisations have built a reputation of leveraging technology to improve consumer experience. Both have a pan-India presence. In the first phase, we are starting with deliveries on stations of Bengaluru, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar. We are hopeful of a buoyant response from passengers and restaurant operators on this route, which will hopefully lead to us providing services on more stations and on newer routes,” added Kapoor.

Passengers can avail pre-ordered food services via Swiggy by following the below steps:

• Input the PNR on the IRCTC app
• Select the preferred station for food delivery
• Browse through an extensive list of restaurants on Swiggy
• Choose a restaurant that is delivering at the specified location and time

The food delivered to passengers will be packed in insulated Swiggy bags to keep the meal warm and fresh. Swiggy’s delivery partner would reach the selected platform X mins before delivery, hand over the food to the customer and mark the food delivered. To ensure smooth operations, effective issue resolution and maximum comfort for the passengers, Swiggy’s support agents will be trained in resolution process, gratification & cancellation policies. The support agents will also be equipped to connect with restaurants and delivery partners based on the order status and the nature of the customer issue.

Railways to Use AI in IRCTC Website and ISRO Satellite Data for Tracking Trains

In a major overhaul, the Indian Railways is revamping the IRCTC website and this include integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) for predicting booking pattern for passengers and suggest the best possible combination of trains available. This was announced by Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav in a virtual press meet.

Additionally, the railways signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for satellite tracking of trains. ISRO will provide real-time data relating to the speed and location of the trains and arrival and departure.

The real-time satellite data about trains will also improve the efficiency in its operation and helps passengers to get to know the movement of trains on a real-time basis.

Notably, to track trains via satellite the Indian Railways has installed global positioning system in 2,700 electric locomotives and in 3,800 diesel locomotives, and plans to fit the GPS in 6,000 locomotives by December 2021. The data recorded by the GPS is used for control office operation, NTIS, analysis and safety purposes.

Besides, in order to introduce contact-less ticketing system, it is also working on issuing QR-Code enabled tickets, both through online and physical counters bookings.

A pilot of contact-less ticket-checking on the line of airport-like check in was already started at Prayagraj Junction of North Central Railway.

Shockingly, India Is About To Privatize 100 Terabytes of Its Citizens Data

Website of IRCTC, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways, is one of the biggest e-commerce portal in India so much that around 1.2 crore (~ 12 million) tickets are booked on the IRCTC website every month.

The website has around 3 crore registered users and about 60 million visits every month. That's around 2 million site visitors every day, and IRCTC issues 700,000 tickets on average each day, which adds up to massive 100 terabytes of passenger data piled each year -- name, age, phone numbers, gender, meal preferences, their income bracket, if they have a physical disability, or fall under the defence quota.

Shockingly, the government of India is now planning to sell this data to the highest bidder, which will be unknown third parties despite of the fact that unlike European Union`s law of GDPR, India DO NOT have any data protection and privacy law.

This is a rare instance where a government is tapping the data potential of one of its own department and it is also be noted that this is the first instance of the possible privatisation of citizen data, by a government department, to earn a profit.

All this was announced last month by India's Rail Minister Piyush Goyal himself. But, it largely went unnoticed despite being a very serious issue. Moreover, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has very recently offered a set of recommendations on data use by private companies, but it remain silent on government departments which are sitting on citizen databases, which are far more refined (in terms of user information) than data held by any other entity in the country.

"The Indian Railways is one of the largest data creators in the world. It has to handle a large volume of data which needs to be used wisely. Data analytics is a way forward," said the minister, last month, while inaugurating a round table conference on data analytics for the railways.

Besides this instance of an announcement on selling citizens' data, Prabhu had earlier talked about this in his Rail Budget presentation of year-2016, and then too he had said that the railways is exploring possibilities of monetizing user data. "Though Indian Railways, as an organisation, collects over 100 Terabytes of data every year, yet it is hardly analysed to gain business insights," he said.

It is to be noted that privatization of data is part of Indian Railways' plan of disinvestment of IRCTC.

Passenger reservation data of trains, passengers, earnings, utilisation of trains, class wise occupancy, waiting lists and passenger profile are also available in e-ticketing system.

"The Indian Railways is one of the largest data creators in the world. It has to handle a large volume of data which needs to be used wisely. Data analytics is a way forward," the minister had said.

"Data itself is of no use unless it is tabulated into something," added the railway minister not knowing the ethics of selling users' data only with the consent of customers/passengers and without compromising their privacy.

According to Railway officials quoted in the Huffington Post, the monetisation of railway data has been in the works for a while. Moreover, the Rail officials have even spoken on ways to collaborate with private companies like Ola and Uber.

"Based on a passenger's booking history, she can get a message offering an Ola or Uber cab on reaching New Delhi railway station. We can also offer food options or a booking for National Museum or Rail Museum through the site," an officer in the ministry told Times of India.

Vasant Dhar, a data scientist and professor at the Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science at New York University, said in a statement to Huffington Post, "when a passenger gives the railways her data, she doesn't expect the data to be sold further for profit. Sharing IRCTC data as part of a disinvestment deal would mean that data given to the railways as a custodian would be passed on to unknown third parties."

According to IT Security Act 2000 (Fairly open ended law) Storing/Sharing/Selling of health, banking, passwords & Identity data has to be ONLY with the user consent, else one can be dragged to court of law however in this case it is the government itself.

Data Breach in India By Government & Other Entities

In 2016, in India's biggest data heist, the IRCTC database got leaked with the information of around 1 crore people was feared stolen. IRCTC officials feared that personal details including phone numbers, date of birth and other such details of its customers have been sold in a CD for Rs 15,000 for whosoever was interested.

Earlier in March, Prime Minister Modi's own app 'Namo App' was also accused of giving users data to a company outside the country. It was then denied by govt agencies and the case was set aside without doing any investigation further despite of the fact that many media outlets, with the help of experts, were able to identify the loopholes and found the data privacy breach to be true.

Later in May, Alibaba-backed PayTM was also alleged to have had given users’ data to Prime Minister's Office, without the consent of its users but it too set aside without any satisfactory clarification.

In the same month, IT media cell of India's political party in rule, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in Karnataka has also admitted to use the behavioural aspects of social media users to influence potential voters, which is exactly like Cambridge Analytica's deeds of past.

In August 2017, whistle-blower agency Wikileaks released a report wherein it stated that US-based Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is using tools devised by US-based technology provider Cross Match Technologies for cyber spying that may have comprised entire database of India’s Aadhaar having data of over 1.2 million Indian citizen.

Via - Gopal Sathe @Huffington Post

[Top Image - Jen Persson's blog]

PayU, IRCTC Joins Hand To Lends Online Payment Services To Users

India’s leading internet payment service provider, PayU has announced its collaborations with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to provide users a safe and secure option to pay for rail tickets booked via the IRCTC website.

According to ETRetail, PayU will now be available as a payment option under the Multiple Payment Services or MPS option on the IRCTC website at the payment stage of booking an e- ticket. Clicking on this option will enable users to make a safe and secure transaction via various payment options like internet banking, debit/credit card, and e-wallet.

Commenting on the development, Rahul Kothari, Enterprise Business Head, PayU India said, “Our payment gateway operates around 80% of the e-commerce business in India today, and this collaboration with IRCTC is aligned with our vision to simplify the payment experience for the growing digital savvy consumers as well as the merchants. Undoubtedly, this is a very large and prestigious mandate for us. IRCTC's biggest strength, its traffic, combined with the success rate of our payment gateway, which is the best in the industry today, is a great match and has a huge potential to enhance the digital transactions landscape and contribute towards making India a cashless/less cash economy.”

Earlier in May 2017, PayU has partnered with Mswipe Technologies Private Limited, India’s largest independent POS merchant acquirer and network provider for digital payments. PayU India claims to processes over 6500 crores worth of digital transactions every month and enjoys a success rate that is 10% higher than the industry average.

Talking about IRCTC, it claims to records 6 lakh transactions per day on an average with the total number of bookings hitting a whopping 13 lakh figure on peak days. Earlier this year, IRCTC has partnered with ePayLater, India’s first of its kind “Buy Now Pay Later” checkout service to offer a quick and completely frictionless payment experience for ticket bookings.

Paytm Achieves Over 1 Mn Train Ticket Bookings In A Month, Eye 3x Growth This Financial Year

M-commerce firm, Paytm has announced today that it is booking over 1 million train tickets in a month.It further boosts that it has become India’s largest train tickets booking platform after IRCTC making it a preferred platform for users to plan their journeys and book train, air, bus and hotels instantly.

The company launched online train ticket bookings in partnership with IRCTC in October of 2016 to become an integrated platform for all travel bookings. Currently, 90% of the train ticket bookings on Paytm are done through the mobile platform.

Commenting on the development, Abhishek Rajan, Vice President, Paytm said, “Our partnership with IRCTC is a major leap towards bringing the trusted and convenient Paytm experience to train tickets booking. Emerging as the country’s largest platform in train ticket bookings is a definitive step towards our goal of building the country’s largest travel booking platform.”

In recent months, Paytm has witnessed exponential growth in its travel vertical with more than 10 million tickets sold in FY 2017. This year, the company is aiming to be the country’s largest destination for all travel booking needs. The travel marketplace team is headquartered in Bengaluru and has scaled up to 150+ members in the last 12 months. It is looking to ramp up to 250 in next two-quarters.

In May 2017, Paytm had unveiled its Payments Bank, becoming the third payments bank in the country, after Airtel and India Post.

ePayLater Partners With IRCTC to Offer Frictionless Payment Experience

ePayLater, India’s first of its kind “Buy Now Pay Later” checkout service, has partnered with IRCTC to offer a quick and completely frictionless payment experience for ticket bookings on IRCTC. Using this payment option, eligible customers can purchase tickets in a single step without having to make a payment at the time of transaction, thus avoiding the usual payment hassles e.g having to enter 16-digit card numbers or having to log in. The customer is allowed to make the payment at a convenient time later within 14 days from the date of transaction.

The company claims that such a payment experience has been made possible using state-of-the-art big data algorithms which help carry out on-the-fly assessment of the fraud and credit risk involved in online transactions.

“We are excited with this development. At ePayLater, it’s been our primary focus to leverage data science to solve real life challenges. Partnering with India’s largest online portal is a strong testimony to our technology and analytics leadership. By providing customers this deferred payment option we not only simplify the checkout experience but also help them manage their short term income-expense mismatches better” says Uday Somyajula, co-founder, ePayLater.

IRCTC records 6 lakh transactions per day on an average with the total number of bookings hitting a whopping 13 lakh figure on peak days. ePayLater aims to capture atleast 5% of this volume in next 6 months.

In order to use the ePayLater option on IRCTC, first time customers are required to provide some basic details on selecting the payment option at checkout. If eligible, the customer can conclude that transaction and every subsequent transaction thereafter through a single click by just providing the One Time Password (OTP).

“85% of our customers tend to make repeat purchases using ePayLater, thereby establishing the use case for convenience. Further, by eliminating the dependencies on third party payment provider such as payment gateways, banks etc at the point of transaction we are able to deliver unmatched transaction success rates especially in peak load conditions. This makes the use case even stronger on IRCTC and hence we expect to see similar, if not better, repeat behaviour on IRCTC” added Aurko Bhattacharya, co founder.

“We are hopeful that this partnership, by virtue of the scale that only IRCTC can boast of, will help us deepen the roots of financial inclusion in the country. Further, on account of the benefits that this product offers to the customers, we also hope to see a higher uptake of e-ticketing with this initiative thereby increasing the adoption of digital payments over cash” says Akshat Saxena, co founder and Head of Business Development.

IRCTC Ties Up With Gurgaon-Based Simpli5d For Empowering Captcha Solutions

IRCTC, the largest e-commerce site in the country, has entered into an exclusive partnership with Simpli5d Technologies, a Gurgaon headquartered leading digital advertising and audience Intelligence company to enhance theirsecurity and boost advertisingrevenues. Captcha, a security tool used to differentiate between humans and other malicious programs, was until now offered as distorted letters butthis is all set to change.Now with this partnership, IRCTC would be using innovative image based NLPCaptcha by Simpli5d Technologies.

"At IRCTC, security and user experience are the most critical concern for us and at the same time we look for new avenues of revenue other than the core business of ticketing,”explains a senior official from IRCTC. “NLPCaptcha fits in beautifully into all this - it provides better security, enhanced user experience and an altogether new stream of advertising revenues for IRCTC. We look forward to a long term and mutually beneficial partnership with Simpli5d Technologies," he added.

IRCTC, which has a massive reach, accountsfor more than 1 million e-commerce transactions per day.More than 100 million captchas are solved on the platform every month and all these will be replaced by NLPCaptcha, a patent pending technology to monetise captchas by Simpli5d Technologies. These Captchas will carry messages from leading brands in the country. This presents a unique opportunity for the brands to engage with the unique and premium audience of IRCTC. This exclusive partnership gives Simpli5d Technologies sole monetization rights for the entire Captcha inventory on the ticketing website.

Amit Mittal, Founder and CEO at Simpli5d Technologies is excited about the new association. "This partnership with IRCTC is a huge milestone for us,”says Amit, “On an average 125 million captchas are solved on IRCTC every month and this gives us a reach of more than 50 mn unique audience. Effectively we will be reaching out to every person in India who does an online transaction and we are sure that our advertisers would love it."

“This is a win-win situation for everyone. We are committed to continue delivering the best results for our advertisers as well as for IRCTC. Delighted to have leading advertisers like Lava, Airtel, Pepsi, Dabur etc. already on board” says Sidharth Oswal, co-founder at Simpli5d Technologies.Simpli5d Technologies is backed by YourNest Angel Fund, Dheeraj Jain of Redcliffe Capital and Udaan Angel Partners.

NLPCaptchais becoming widely popular and has been adopted by hundreds of websites and advertisers across India, Europe and South East Asia. Thekey USP for advertisers isits ability to provide guaranteed attention of the end user and a brand recall which is as high as 229% more than traditional banners(as per a study done by Effective Measure, an independent market research company). It delivers significant cost saving for advertisers, with figures as impressive as 85% as verified by Sizmek, a global ad serving and validation platform.

Several brands have shown interest in the platform, with Lava, always looking for innovative platforms to reach their consumer is a launch partner. With recent association with M.S. Dhoni as a brand ambassador, they are looking out to rapidly expand their already growing consumer base.

"Lava wants to strengthen its brand in India and aims to reach out to millions of consumers. IRCTC with its wide reach provides an ideal platform for our ambitions. NLP Captcha platform provides high engagement with our brand message and therefore we are excited about this tie-up." Harish Aswani, Digital Lead at Lava.

"IRCTC is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms with a massive reach when it comes to Display advertising in India. With NLP Captcha, we can not only reach out to desired TG of Lava, but at the same time we can ensure that all the interactions will be driven by real humans only and not by bots.”. Sachin Bhatia, Digital Director at Motivator.

IRCTC Ties Up With Gurgaon-Based Simpli5d For Empowering Captcha Solutions

IRCTC, the largest e-commerce site in the country, has entered into an exclusive partnership with Simpli5d Technologies, a Gurgaon headquartered leading digital advertising and audience Intelligence company to enhance theirsecurity and boost advertisingrevenues. Captcha, a security tool used to differentiate between humans and other malicious programs, was until now offered as distorted letters butthis is all set to change.Now with this partnership, IRCTC would be using innovative image based NLPCaptcha by Simpli5d Technologies.

"At IRCTC, security and user experience are the most critical concern for us and at the same time we look for new avenues of revenue other than the core business of ticketing,”explains a senior official from IRCTC. “NLPCaptcha fits in beautifully into all this - it provides better security, enhanced user experience and an altogether new stream of advertising revenues for IRCTC. We look forward to a long term and mutually beneficial partnership with Simpli5d Technologies," he added.

IRCTC, which has a massive reach, accountsfor more than 1 million e-commerce transactions per day.More than 100 million captchas are solved on the platform every month and all these will be replaced by NLPCaptcha, a patent pending technology to monetise captchas by Simpli5d Technologies. These Captchas will carry messages from leading brands in the country. This presents a unique opportunity for the brands to engage with the unique and premium audience of IRCTC. This exclusive partnership gives Simpli5d Technologies sole monetization rights for the entire Captcha inventory on the ticketing website.

Amit Mittal, Founder and CEO at Simpli5d Technologies is excited about the new association. "This partnership with IRCTC is a huge milestone for us,”says Amit, “On an average 125 million captchas are solved on IRCTC every month and this gives us a reach of more than 50 mn unique audience. Effectively we will be reaching out to every person in India who does an online transaction and we are sure that our advertisers would love it."

“This is a win-win situation for everyone. We are committed to continue delivering the best results for our advertisers as well as for IRCTC. Delighted to have leading advertisers like Lava, Airtel, Pepsi, Dabur etc. already on board” says Sidharth Oswal, co-founder at Simpli5d Technologies.Simpli5d Technologies is backed by YourNest Angel Fund, Dheeraj Jain of Redcliffe Capital and Udaan Angel Partners.

NLPCaptchais becoming widely popular and has been adopted by hundreds of websites and advertisers across India, Europe and South East Asia. Thekey USP for advertisers isits ability to provide guaranteed attention of the end user and a brand recall which is as high as 229% more than traditional banners(as per a study done by Effective Measure, an independent market research company). It delivers significant cost saving for advertisers, with figures as impressive as 85% as verified by Sizmek, a global ad serving and validation platform.

Several brands have shown interest in the platform, with Lava, always looking for innovative platforms to reach their consumer is a launch partner. With recent association with M.S. Dhoni as a brand ambassador, they are looking out to rapidly expand their already growing consumer base.

"Lava wants to strengthen its brand in India and aims to reach out to millions of consumers. IRCTC with its wide reach provides an ideal platform for our ambitions. NLP Captcha platform provides high engagement with our brand message and therefore we are excited about this tie-up." Harish Aswani, Digital Lead at Lava.

"IRCTC is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms with a massive reach when it comes to Display advertising in India. With NLP Captcha, we can not only reach out to desired TG of Lava, but at the same time we can ensure that all the interactions will be driven by real humans only and not by bots.”. Sachin Bhatia, Digital Director at Motivator.

IRCTC Started Cash-On-Delivery (CoD) System Rail Ticketing At Your Doorstep

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation aka IRCTC has started a new cash-on-delivery (CoD) rail ticketing service in partnership with BookMyTrain.com, where you can now book a rail ticket online and get it delivered at home where the payment can be made. With this facility IRCTC is targeting those customers who are reluctant to use their credit or debit cards as well as those who don't have net-banking facility.

"One has to just book the ticket online and payments will be made at the time of delivery of tickets," said a senior IRCTC official involved with the project.

This scheme has been launched on pilot basis and the service will be available in more than 200 cities initially. Customers can book a ticket 5 days prior to commencement of journey.

While Rs 40 will be charged for the delivery of each Sleeper Class ticket, Rs 60 will be charged for an AC class ticket.

Noida-based Anduril Technologies through their website and their App - BookMyTrain.com is authorised for providing CoD services.

This is another attempt to move people away from the ticket counters and de-congest the booking windows, the official said.

IRCTC Goes Mobile Launched Official Android App for Booking Tickets

Railway ticket booking in India has always been a grueling task. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC), which is the official e-ticketing service of the Indian Railways, has finally taken charge of the situation and launched its official Android app. The Android app dubbed as 'IRCTC Connect', will allow users to easily book railway tickets on the go.

The app can be downloaded absolutely free of cost from the Google Play store and requires Android 4.1 and above to function properly. It is 12 MB in size.

IRCTC Connect will allow people to search and book railways tickets from their Smartphones or Tablets. It will even let them check their existing reservations and cancel them from within the app. In order to make sure that no one misses their train, the app has the feature to activate upcoming journey alerts.

In order to allow easing booking, the app retains the passenger details that are added using the app. Unfortunately the app does not retain all the previous details that have been added through the desktop site.

The only big drawback which the app has is that it cannot be accessed between from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. During this time interval, the travelers can only book tickets through the IRCTC desktop website of through physical booking counters. The app currently doesn’t have any option to check the PNR status of an existing booking. It even doesn't allow one to change their profile password. The app’s interface is very user friendly.

IRCTC Goes Mobile Launched Official Android App for Booking Tickets

Railway ticket booking in India has always been a grueling task. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC), which is the official e-ticketing service of the Indian Railways, has finally taken charge of the situation and launched its official Android app. The Android app dubbed as 'IRCTC Connect', will allow users to easily book railway tickets on the go.

The app can be downloaded absolutely free of cost from the Google Play store and requires Android 4.1 and above to function properly. It is 12 MB in size.

IRCTC Connect will allow people to search and book railways tickets from their Smartphones or Tablets. It will even let them check their existing reservations and cancel them from within the app. In order to make sure that no one misses their train, the app has the feature to activate upcoming journey alerts.

In order to allow easing booking, the app retains the passenger details that are added using the app. Unfortunately the app does not retain all the previous details that have been added through the desktop site.

The only big drawback which the app has is that it cannot be accessed between from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. During this time interval, the travelers can only book tickets through the IRCTC desktop website of through physical booking counters. The app currently doesn’t have any option to check the PNR status of an existing booking. It even doesn't allow one to change their profile password. The app’s interface is very user friendly.

IRCTC To Launch Open E-Commerce Platform & A Co-Branded Marketplace

IRCTC has released a new tender which invites bidders for selection for a co-branded marketplace solution provider. This tender has been released just a few weeks after IRCTC had put its ecommerce marketplace on the back burner.

IRCTC floats this tender to call upon Online Retail Marketplace companies or similar to offer a Co-Branded platform to showcase retail, deals, and other services that will be offered from third parties/ retailers, online retailers, Affiliates, brands and service providers or their own inventory or combination thereof to the IRCTC customers to buy online services.

The tender document can be purchased by the bidders for a non-refundable sum of Rs.1000. The document then needs to be submitted along with a demand draft of Rs. 2 Lakhs.

The contract will be valid for a period of 2 years where the IRCTC will be having full rights to change the basis of or procedures.

The bidder will have to meet certain eligibility criteria in order to become a successful bidder.

• The bidder needs to be an established Information Technology or ecommerce company. The company should further have a successful and functioning online marketplace for a minimum of 2 years. It should also have at least one warehouse in India.


• The company needs to have annual turnover of Rs. 50 Crores from its B2C ecommerce business in the year 2012-2013.


• The company must successfully aggregate over five hundred in retail and one lakh SKUs. It should also be able to process 1-20 orders every month in any location on the earth. It must also have past records of managing traffic of 5 million visits in a month.


• It must cater to a broad spectrum of categories.


• The company which is bidding should be able to give expedited shipping options which include guaranteed 1 day or 2 day delivery option.


• The company should not have been blacklisted with any PSU in the past.

 

The Bidder will have to carry out a list of activities. Some of them are as follows:

• The company will have to power a co-branded marketplace for IRCTC. The marketplace will have end to end deliveries which will be taken care by the company by providing: open commerce, assisted commerce service and marketplace solution.


• The bidder will have to provide the IRCTC users with a Seamless, personalized and differentiated shopping experience for deals, retail and services.


• The bidder will be needed to provide IRCTC with Commission management module, sales dashboard, banner utilizations, traffic conversions reports in reference to each and every category of services and products being made available at the marketplace.


• The bidder needs to enable co-branded solution with ten categories but with a minimum of one lakh SKUs and five hundred sellers at the time of launch.


• The bidder will be required to manage social media-Twitter, Facebook, Email, end of season sales, bank campaigns, CRM, Google online shopping festival and other promotions.


• The bidder will also have to provide technical help for the ecommerce platform. It will have to manage the solution hosted on a cloud or self owned S/W, H/W networks of security components.


• The bidder will also have to monitor the stocked, booked and delivered products.


• The bidder will have to provide the users with a secure payment gateway interface.


• Conformance to B2C supply chain should be made available by integrating with logistics partners.


• The marketplace should facilitate tax collection between its customers and merchants. Service Tax and VAT linked at the delivery end should be facilitated by the bidder company.

 

The bids will be evaluated by IRCTC in two stages.  The first stage will be technical and the second will be financial bid. Only the bidders who will pass the first stage will progress to the second stage.

IRCTC To Launch Open E-Commerce Platform & A Co-Branded Marketplace

IRCTC has released a new tender which invites bidders for selection for a co-branded marketplace solution provider. This tender has been released just a few weeks after IRCTC had put its ecommerce marketplace on the back burner.

IRCTC floats this tender to call upon Online Retail Marketplace companies or similar to offer a Co-Branded platform to showcase retail, deals, and other services that will be offered from third parties/ retailers, online retailers, Affiliates, brands and service providers or their own inventory or combination thereof to the IRCTC customers to buy online services.

The tender document can be purchased by the bidders for a non-refundable sum of Rs.1000. The document then needs to be submitted along with a demand draft of Rs. 2 Lakhs.

The contract will be valid for a period of 2 years where the IRCTC will be having full rights to change the basis of or procedures.

The bidder will have to meet certain eligibility criteria in order to become a successful bidder.

• The bidder needs to be an established Information Technology or ecommerce company. The company should further have a successful and functioning online marketplace for a minimum of 2 years. It should also have at least one warehouse in India.


• The company needs to have annual turnover of Rs. 50 Crores from its B2C ecommerce business in the year 2012-2013.


• The company must successfully aggregate over five hundred in retail and one lakh SKUs. It should also be able to process 1-20 orders every month in any location on the earth. It must also have past records of managing traffic of 5 million visits in a month.


• It must cater to a broad spectrum of categories.


• The company which is bidding should be able to give expedited shipping options which include guaranteed 1 day or 2 day delivery option.


• The company should not have been blacklisted with any PSU in the past.

 

The Bidder will have to carry out a list of activities. Some of them are as follows:

• The company will have to power a co-branded marketplace for IRCTC. The marketplace will have end to end deliveries which will be taken care by the company by providing: open commerce, assisted commerce service and marketplace solution.


• The bidder will have to provide the IRCTC users with a Seamless, personalized and differentiated shopping experience for deals, retail and services.


• The bidder will be needed to provide IRCTC with Commission management module, sales dashboard, banner utilizations, traffic conversions reports in reference to each and every category of services and products being made available at the marketplace.


• The bidder needs to enable co-branded solution with ten categories but with a minimum of one lakh SKUs and five hundred sellers at the time of launch.


• The bidder will be required to manage social media-Twitter, Facebook, Email, end of season sales, bank campaigns, CRM, Google online shopping festival and other promotions.


• The bidder will also have to provide technical help for the ecommerce platform. It will have to manage the solution hosted on a cloud or self owned S/W, H/W networks of security components.


• The bidder will also have to monitor the stocked, booked and delivered products.


• The bidder will have to provide the users with a secure payment gateway interface.


• Conformance to B2C supply chain should be made available by integrating with logistics partners.


• The marketplace should facilitate tax collection between its customers and merchants. Service Tax and VAT linked at the delivery end should be facilitated by the bidder company.

 

The bids will be evaluated by IRCTC in two stages.  The first stage will be technical and the second will be financial bid. Only the bidders who will pass the first stage will progress to the second stage.

Official IRCTC app on Windows devices Launched to Book train tickets

Now you can plan your travel, book train tickets and do much more on-the-go, using your Windows Phone, Windows 8 tablet or PC. IRCTC has embarked on an application (app) journey, with the launch of the official IRCTC app. The app has been made available exclusively for Windows devices. It will be available throughout the day excepting 0800-1200 hrs and 2330-0030 hrs. You can download the IRCTC app at Windows Store and Windows Phone store.

IRCTC already have an app on Android platform, now the app has been launched on Windows platform as well, the app perform all the tasks already available on the IRCTC web site. Moreover you can also get other features including visual maps of train routes, Windows Phone live tiles lighting up as train tickets and access to saved traveler profiles from multiple devices among many others.

Announcing the availability of the app, Mr. Rakesh Tandon, CMD, IRCTC said, "We feel the app is ideal for the modern consumer who is always on the move. Windows is the most trusted and widely used platform and offers the requisite security required while handling vast amounts of personal and financial user data."

With IRCTC Windows app you can:

• Make train enquiries


• Plan your travel


• Make railway reservations


• Check PNR status


• Check booking/cancellation history


• Check ticket availability

The app lights up inbuilt features of your Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices to bring you a delightful experience. Destination names show up quickly, planning your journey, making train choices and booking tickets is more seamless and immersive.