Indian Railways Ticket Reservation Guide

Indian Railways has made the process of seat reservation and booking of Indian railway tickets much simpler than ever before. makemytrip.com recently received approval from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) to sell railway inventory online, as well as do room bookings for railway budget hotels. The service will be started by September this year. Apart from this, they are also planning to launch international travel insurance services by November, this year. makemytrip.com also launched, TravelMate, its domestic travel insurance product online, yesterday. TravelMate, which offers cover against several contingencies like accidental death, emergency medical treatment, trip cancellation, trip curtailment, checked baggage loss, flight delays, trip interruption and emergency hotel accommodation etc. was, introduced offline sometime ago by makemytrip.com in collaboration with Apollo DKV Insurance Company.

“We were offering the travel insurance services through our offline channels, but now we have taken the product online. We are selling about 1,000 domestic travel insurance policies every day. By year end, we aim to take the sales to 3,000 per day,” stated Rajesh Magow, CFO, makemytrip.com . Talking about the approval to sell railway inventory, Magow said, “We have been awaiting the Application Programming Interface (API) approval from the IRCTC since April, 2007. Though we have already received the approval from the railways, some paper work is still pending.”

The company aims to reach a turnover of Rs 1700 crore for the current fiscal. Talking about the strategy to achieve the turnover, Magow said, “Most of the revenue will be generated through our 22 retail outlets spread across India . We are currently selling about 8,000 flight tickets, 1,000 hotel room nights and 100 holiday packages a day. The number of bookings is improving with time. As the traveller behaviour has evolved and matured in India, new needs have emerged. Most travellers planning overseas trips look for travel insurance. In fact, a customised travel insurance solution complements the ‘perfect trip' experience – whether international or domestic.” Travel Guide India