IRCTC-Yebhi partnership to benefit non-metros

IRCTC, which handles railway reservations and related activities, was also once Indian Railways' catering arm. But that business was lost in 2010. Since then it has always been on the lookout for alternative revenue streams, taking to corporate catering and increasing its focus on bottled water production.  

It has now ventured into e-tailing as well.

It has forged a partnership with Shop Online Trading Pvt Ltd (SOTPL), a franchisee of the online portal Yebhi.com. Yebhi will be responsible for developing and managing IRCTC's e-tailing platform, from designing the web page to final delivery of products to the customer. The IRCTC site will sell apparel, footwear and home decor online. The site will be operational from August.

The advantage of IRCTC is that, thanks to its ticketing activities, it is already the largest e-commerce site in the country, with 1.2 million visits daily and generating 180 million transactions a year. Yebhi founder Manmohan Agarwal says he hopes that through IRCTC Yebhi will be able to reach out to the "real India". Small towns are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries of the tie-up.

Yebhi currently has a user base of nearly 820,000, according to its Chief Business Officer Nikhil Rungta.

Yebhi won the partnership through a tender process IRCTC initiated in February this year. E-commerce companies with a minimum of Rs 40 crore annual turnover from business to customer (B2C), and having a catalogue of over 500 brands in five product categories or more were eligible to apply.

The Indian e-retail market is expected to reach about Rs 4.5 lakh crore by 2021 from the current Rs 3,500 crore, according to Technopak data.