Railways Sleeper Class Booking: Over 70% Online

One interesting fact about E-ticketing for railway reservation in India is actually in every five passengers, one passenger is using online services to book a railway ticket. This shows that the e-ticketing process has caught pace. For the month of July e-ticketing figures in Indian railways indicates, of the total train booking in the sleeper class more than 50% were through online booking. It is needless to say that traveling via train is safe, cheap and comfortable (in AC classes).

The turnover from e-ticketing for Indian Railways (IR), took a big leap from a whopping Rs 1,744 crore in the financial year 2008 from a meager Rs 27 crore in Year 2002, as statistics from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) suggest. For the months of FY09 the revenue earned has aleady crossed Rs 978 cr in the first four months of FY09. It is expected that the figures would be around Rs 3,500 cr by the end of the year.

IRCTC has taken initiatives to upgrade existing facility of technical infrastructure by upgrading the server and increasing the bandwidth. This has also to be facilitated by software addition which would drive ticketing growth mainly. Former Railway Board chairman V K Agarwal said that there is a sudden upsurge in e-bookings and this is a result of the steps taken by Indian Railways to bring in technical advancement which include servers and enhanced connectivity.

The popularity of booking tickets online has gone up and it can be judged from the fact that even in sleeper classes which are non-ACs the e booking is increasing. In the month of July 55% of the total e-ticketing had been reported for sleeper class which is a good figure. 41 % of the people who booked ticket online used credit card and this remains the preferred mode of payment to book ticket online in comparison to net banking which was used by 31 % of customers

The process e-ticketing has crossed a long distance since the year of it s launch 2002-03 in terms of service provision. In the year of launch approximately 4.17 lakh passengers used the service to book e-tickets. This went up to 3.52 crore in 2007-08,. Around 1.95 crore of passengers booked tickets online in the the first four months of the current fiscal.

An IRCTC official was quoted saying that a better growth is aimed and in the coming years he endeavors would be to reach out to aam aadmi or the general public in all possible means. It would be needless if we say this is accosting cutting measure for the Indian Railways, to implement e-ticketing. New techniques have been implemented for the benefits of people.