IRCTC Issues Clarification After Adani Acquires Trainman; Says 'There Is No Competition With Agents'

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited on Sunday referring to articles claiming that Adani is likely to compete against IRCTC after its takeover of Trainman clarified that there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents, through an exchange filing. The company further added that Trainman is one of the 32 B2C partners of IRCTC and contributes only 0.13 per cent of the total reserved ticketing.

Giving out additional data IRCTC added that close to 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked on a daily basis in the Indian railway from which 81 per cent e-tickets are booked through IRCTC.

The company in the regulatory filing said, "IRCTC has entered into partnerships with many agencies under schemes like B2B, EGovernance, B2C etc.to complement IRCTC’s efforts to reach out to citizens for ease of ticketing and there is no competition between IRCTC and it's agents."

It further stated that B2C firms are integrated with the IRCTC business to provide e-ticketing services to customers through websites or mobiles.

As Trainman is only one of the partners, its acquisition by any other agency will not change the application of the policy in any way. The company also added, "All the integrations and operations will continue to be done through IRCTC only as is being done presently."

IRCTC responds to Jairam Ramesh

IRCTC has also responded to a tweet by Jairam Ramesh and said it will not be a threat or a challenge to the IRCTC and repeated that the takeover of Trainman by Adani Enterprises will not change anything.

IRCTC's Tweet read, "This is a misleading statement. Trainman is one of the 32 authorised B2C (Business to Customer) partners of IRCTC. Changing the stake won't make any difference. All integration and operations will continue to be done through IRCTC. It will only complement IRCTC and is not a threat or challenge to IRCTC."

Adani Enterprises acquires Trainman

Adani Digital Labs Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises has acquired online train booking and information platform, Stark Enterprises also known as Trainman. This is the second investment in travel and booking space for Adani Enterprises after it purchased a minority stake in Cleartrip, Flipkart India's online travel aggregator in October 2021.

Trainman was founded in 2011 by IIT Roorkee Graduate Vineet Gupta and Sachin Saxena. The Gurugram-based company is an authorised booking partner of IRCTC and provides real-time information related to seat availability, live train status and passenger name record.

IRCTC shares

IRCTC shares on Monday at 10:29 am IST were at Rs 663.85, down by 0.17 per cent.