IRCTC in talks to onboard ONDC for ticket booking

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is in talks with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to allow the latter to provide ticket booking service to customers.

Initially, it could start with the bus booking services offered by the IRCTC, a Central Public Sector Enterprise under the Ministry of Railways, said a senior railway official, adding that a blueprint on the kind of collaboration is still under works.

During the Q3FY24 investor call, IRCTC CMD S.K. Jain had spoken about the possible cooperation with the ONDC.  “We were discussing ONDC. So, our discussion is already going on with them for each recasting and bus booking,” he said, but did not give any time frame for the formal announcement.

The IRCTC Rail Connect app has over 100 million downloads offering ticket booking for trains, flights, buses, and hotels. The internet ticketing of IRCTC continues to demonstrate resilience amid the conversion of reserve tickets back to the early reserve tickets during the pre-pandemic period and roughly sells 460 million tickets online annually.

Train tickets booked using the platform during the Q3FY24 stood at 55 million for the AC class, 45 million non-AC class, and 14 million second sitting.

Recently, cab-hailing aggregator Uber signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government-backed ONDC to explore mobility service integration. T Koshy, MD and CEO of ONDC, has said the platform is continuously evolving and MTT (Mobility, Transport and Travel) is certainly a critical sector.

Several mobility players like Kochi Metro, Chennai Metro, and RedBus have integrated with ONDC to provide seamless mobility services to commuters