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NEW DELHI . Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu has approved a bunch of new initiatives — believed to be potential money-spinners — for the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). Among them is the concept of “Concierge Service”, which is to be started with a pilot project in New Delhi. “We will be starting the service soon. It will come on the website,” A K Manocha, Chairman and Managing Director of IRCTC, told The Indian Express.
Soon, you will be able to hire someone who will receive you at station when your train arrives, take care of your luggage and other hassles and then drop you home in a secure cab — all in a package deal offered by Railways on its ticket-booking website.
The IRCTC, which is basically an e-commerce giant of the railways, has also been given the go-ahead to explore the business of operating helicopter services at the Vaishno Devi shrine, run glass-roof trains for tourists, introduce special air-conditioned local train service in the metro cities and, in what is being viewed as unusual, sell apples too.
The IRCTC will procure high-quality apples from Container Corporation of India’s Sonepat facility. It will sell them to train passengers, at railway colonies and subsequently find other institutional bulk buyers, for instance the Indian Army.
The proposals were discussed in a meeting Prabhu had with IRCTC officials, where the corporation was identified as a potential big earner and a carrier of value-added services in the railways ecosystem with minimum liability to the transporter. Financial Express