Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which runs Irctc.co.in, is planning to venture in the ecommerce space. The firm says that the move is aimed at monetizing its registered user base.

“We are discussing with existing firms in the e-commerce space to thrash out the details. This will help us monetise our registered user base of over two crore,” said IRCTC Managing Director RK Tandon reported Hindu Business Line.

Tandon assured that the new plans will not affect its existing online ticketing traffic. He added that the firm will invest in further upgrading the IT infrastructure.

IRCTC will outsource the back-end jobs for online retailing, while the front-end ones will be owned by the firm. It followed the same model while diversifying into hotel booking and flight ticket booking services.

It is currently inviting qualifying bids from companies in the e-commerce space for building and managing the platform. The proposal is that IRCTC will pay the players different levels of commission based on the total value of sales achieved on the Web site. The commission will go down once sales value goes up.