According to Indian Railways Tourism and Catering Corporation (IRCTC) Managing Director, Rakesh Kumar Tondon, out of the total revenue of around Rs 500 crore earned by the firm in FY’I2, about 35 per cent, amounting to Rs 170 crore, have come from online reservations. “Its share has increased since we took a hit on our catering revenue when the railways changed its policy,” the MD said in an interview to Business Standard.

Tandon further said that currently, the allotted booking ratio between IRCTC and passenger reservation system (PRS) is 50:50. “Before the recent Tatkal scheme, it was 40:60. The PRS counters don’t have much congestion because everyone isn’t trying to book at the same time. However, from 8.00 AM to 8:10 AM, about 40,000 tickets are booked online, for which around 2 lakh people log on simultaneously. They try several times if a login attempt fails or if tickets are unavailable, which causes the congestion,” he added.

Speaking on how does IRCTC plan to deal with the bandwidth congestion that consumers face, Tandon said that they have increased bandwidth to 512 GHz. “Moreover, we are holding deliberations with the railways about staggering the timing for Tatkal and for the advance reservation period timings. ARP booking can be started after Tatkal, say an hour later, from 9.00 AM. That way the load on the site will be staggered and distributed. That should take care of the bandwidth congestion,” Tandon informed.

Commenting on their plans to reduce the transaction time, which is currently about 1.5 to 2.5 minutes per transaction, Tandon said, “The failure rate, on an average, is 25 per cent and we are tying up with banks and identifying reasons for that. We are also thinking of a rolling deposit scheme for frequent travelers, who will have money pre-deposited with the IRCTC. They will just need to log in and not have to go through the payment gateway, reducing transaction time by 50 per cent. The rupay card will further help in tackling payment gateway issues.”