‘This Is a Misleading Statement,’ IRCTC Says While Countering Congress Spokesperson’s Claims

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) dropped a Tweet on Sunday to counter the claims of Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh. The post read that Adani’s latest acquisition of online train booking and information platform Trainman does not threaten or challenge them as according to Jairam, Adani’s acquisition was an attempt to take over a public sector company.

While re-tweeting Ramesh’s post, IRCTC articulated in Hindi, “This is a misleading statement. Trainman is one of the 32 authorized B2C (Business to Customer) partners of IRCTC. Changing the stake won’t make any difference. All integration and operations will continue to be done through IRCTC. It will only complement IRCTC and is not a threat or challenge to IRCTC.”

This tweet was a reply to Jairam Ramesh’s statement on the development. “First collision with IRCTC… and then take over,” he penned in Hindi while posting his thoughts on Twitter.

According to a statement from the government-controlled company, Trainman is one of the 32 business-to-consumer partners of IRCTC, contributing 0.13% of the total volume of reserved ticket sales. Moreover, the application of the current B2C policy will not be altered in any way as a result of the acquisition by any other agency, and all integrations and operations will “continue to be done through IRCTC.”

On Friday, Adani Enterprises Ltd. announced its plans to purchase 100% of Stark Enterprises, the company that runs the train ticketing website, Trainman.

Meanwhile, IRCTC claims that in order to expand its reach, it has partnered with numerous organisations under the business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and e-governance schemes. IRCTC also claims that there is no rivalry between it and its agents.

As per the statement, the B2C companies have integrated with IRCTC to offer reserved e-ticketing services to customers directly through their websites or mobile apps using IRCTC API. 33.8% of its revenue came from ticket sales in FY23, down from 54% in FY22, while 41.7% came from catering, up from 27% the year before.

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