E-Commerce in India

As per this Excel report "An Analysis on the behaviour of Payment Gateways during the month May-08" on IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited), the Indian Railway's internet ticket booking website logged over 3 million (3,403,495) transactions amounting to Rs. 233 crores (INR 233,80,39,488) or roughly $58 million ($58,450,987) in a single month of the holiday season. I guess this should make IRCTC the most popular E-Commerce website in India.

The average time taken for refund against cancellation of tickets is roughly 3 days. Among all the Indian Payment Gateways, the ICICI Payment Gateway recorded the highest number of transactions.

The application has been built using BroadVision.

I feel IRCTC is the best and the only way online for most people to buy railway tickets in India and avoid the perennially long queues at the reservation centers. Online users are however milked Rs.15 extra as service charges by IRCTC and a similar additional amount by the bank.

Although there is still plenty of scope for improvement, the site is speedier than last year & sports a better UI. The new option of being able to buy Tatkal & waitlisted tickets online is a boon for the last minute trip planner.

Update (9-April-09): With estimated gross sales for 2008-09 at Rs 3,400 crore (Rs 34 billion), IRCTC is the largest contributor to e-commerce in India, accounting for over a third of the total e-commerce of Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion).

Cleartrip and Yatra which now offer train reservations through IRCTC's API platform have an AC to Non-AC bookings ratio of 70 to 30, while for the IRCTC website, the ratio is the opposite.

Update(26-Aug-09): Did you know, out of the 880,000-odd train tickets sold everyday, around 300,000, or 34 per cent, were online? IRCTC has more than 10 million registered users.

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