Board a train, alight at the railway station, shop for your essentials at a family shopping mall on the rail premises itself. This is what the railway authorities are planning with the latest plans being drawn for Mumbai Central railway station on the Western Railway. This is followed by the one proposed at Dadar railway station which shall fall in-between the space covering Western and Central Railways.
On March 1, the Western Railway invited tenders for developing, operating and maintenance of this family mall. According to officials from WR, designs and space for this family mall will be prepared and that it is expected to come up in the station premises which connects both; the Terminus and Suburban corridors at Mumbai Central.
“We are looking at conceptualizing and developing this family mall at a cost of just over Rs 11 crore or so. Likewise we shall be constructing a family mall at Dadar station as well,” said an official from Western Railway on condition of anonymity.
The family malls will also have facilities of spa, unisex salon, gaming zones along with domestic and multi-national retail brands inside. Since Mumbai Central has a suburban line and Terminus terminating there; the rail official claim that it shall definitely attract eyeballs of people and passengers alike. Passengers wanting to board long distance trains from Mumbai Central could visit this family mall to kill time and/or even purchase essential commodities and something which would fancy their journey.
At Mumbai Central Terminus, WR are already looking at upgrading the waiting room with facilities like massage and spa apart from spruced up interiors. The concept of Family Mall is basically for value retailing by bringing several multi-brands under one roof keeping in mind the passenger’s need for different products like grocery, apparels, waiting area, recreation room, accessories, game-zone, multiplex etc. The licensee will be entitled to sub-let whole or part of the allotted space to any person, entity, national or international retail multi-brands and utility services.
Plus, this will help them generate additional revenue under a non-fare revenue model. The revenue from non-fare box which until now has been limited to catering units, billboards, outdoor advertising and content-on-demand. According to sources in WR, they are looking at offering space at different railway stations in the suburban section so as to utilize space.
Similar shopping complexes at Andheri, Kandivali, Goregaon and Borivali stations in the near future. The contract for running these family malls will be for a period of 5 years from which they intend to earn revenues of Rs 11-12 crore per station. This will be on the lines of commercial buildings that were built on railway station buildings in Navi Mumbai on Central Railway.
Due to the pandemic, the rail authorities feel that it could have an effect on attracting private parties and developers for these projects. Analysis of sources of revenue states that non-fare box revenues in the Mumbai suburban network amount to around Rs 100 crore. Advertising forms more than 2/3rd of this revenue, rentals from station retail and catering units and other sources form the rest.
As per MRVC study in 2014, the contribution of non-fare box revenue for railways in Mumbai is 6 percent as against other cities like Hong Kong that stands at 41 percent, Tokyo at 33 percent, Singapore at 24 percent, DMRC, Delhi at 20 percent and Taipei at 13 percent.
