IRCTC not a catchy name, we're looking for a new one, says Piyush Goyal

Known for coming up with easy-to-remember names for numerous schemes and applications that he unveils, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday asked his department to come up with a new “catchy” name for IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation).

The minister said that even he finds it difficult to remember it sometimes and would be better to have a name that is easy to remember while browsing the internet.

The railway department will come up with some suggestions for the same and one of the officials suggested ‘railtravel’ as a possible name.

At one point, IRCTC was one of the biggest e-commerce players. With an average 573,000 tickets sold daily through the IRCTC website, it is the consumer face of Indian Railways. Besides ticketing, it is into on-board catering and bottled water business. It has over 30 million registered user.

The NDA government had planned to list the company last year but later dropped the proposal after a waiver of service charge on booking of tickets hit its business.

In 2014, IRCTC floated a tender to call upon online retail marketplace companies or similar to offer a co-branded platform to showcase retail, deals, and other services that will be offered from third parties/retailers, online retailers, affiliates, brands and service providers or their own inventory or combination thereof to the IRCTC customers to buy online services.

IRCTC has recently announced offers to make tickets cheaper. The offer is on ticket bookings through IRCTC website — irctc.co.in — or IRCTC app and when the payments are done using the platforms of Paytm and MobiKwik.

This festive season, while MobiKwik is offering a 10 per cent discount on payments made through its app for train tickets booked on IRCTC app or website, Paytm is offering a cashback of Rs 100 on for bookings through its platform.

In order to ease search on the IRCTC website, the railways has also roped in Paytm for checking their PNR status using the Paytm website or app. The move is aimed at reducing pressure on the IRCTC website, which is difficult to access sometimes due to a large number of users.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC)