The entry of Gautam Adani into the online train ticketing segment on Monday led to IRCTC saying that the new player will not have any adverse impact on its business.
Adani Enterprises had announced the acquisition of a 100 per cent stake in Stark Enterprises, which operates the online train booking portal Trainman. The development had led to a buzz that Gautam Adani would now challenge IRCTC’s stronghold on online ticket booking.
In a regulatory filing to the stock exchanges on Monday, IRCTC said that around 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked on a daily basis in Indian Railways, out of which 81 per cent are e-tickets, booked through the company.
“IRCTC has entered into partnerships with many agencies under schemes like B2B (business-to-business), e-governance, B2C (business-to-consumer) to complement IRCTC’s efforts to reach out to citizens for ease of ticketing and there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents.
“B2C firms are especially integrated with IRCTC business to provide reserved e-ticketing 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 per cent of the total reserved ticketing,’’ the state-owned firm in which the Centre holds 62 per cent said.
IRCTC added that the acquisition of Trainman will not change the application of the current B2C policy anyway and that all the integrations and operations will continue to be done through IRCTC only as is being done now.
According to a note from ICICI Direct, IRCTC is a 100 per cent monopoly in railway ticketing and whether one books tickets from the platform or from aggregators such as Paytm, MakeMyTrip and now the Adani acquired Trainman, IRCTC makes money. It added that the company posted revenues of Rs 3,540 crore in 2022-23 and a net profit margin of 30 per cent, which is one of the most profitable e-commerce platforms in India.
“Only a handful e-com ventures are profitable. IRCTC’s competition is not with other booking portals but offline railway ticketing…The key risk for an investor to know about IRCTC is government policy,” ICICI Direct said.
