IRCTC’s e-ticketing revenue drops due to withdrawal of service charges

The government decision to withdraw service charges during demonetisation period has hit the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp's e-ticket booking revenue, said an Economic Times report.
 
The IRCTC’s internet ticketing revenue witnessed a drop of 26% to Rs 466.05 crore in fiscal year 2016-17, said the report.
 
IRCTC would enjoy service charge ranging between Rs 20 and Rs 40 on AC e-ticketing, but this mechanism was removed in the month of November 2016.
 
Internet ticketing comes as the second-largest category for the IRCTC at around 33% of total revenue.
 
Data showed that IRCTC sold around 209 million tickets via online platform in FY17, which saw an increase of 5% from 199 million tickets sold in the previous fiscal.
 
Together, these 209 million tickets aggregated up to Rs 24,485.21 crore in FY17.
 
Despite witnessing a decline on e-ticketing revenue, IRCTC still outruns MakeMyTrip which recorded 9.3 million ticket sales in FY17 valuing up to Rs 14,800 crore.
 
Apart from this, IRCTC also registered a growth of 4.7% in total income to Rs 1,596.31 crore in FY17. While both gross margin and profit before tax came in at Rs 353.42 crore and Rs 211.71 crore which grew by over 7%.
 
Earlier in October 2017, Indian Railways has extended the deadline for passengers to enjoy no service charges on their e-ticket booking till March 2018.
 
During fiscal FY16, about one-third of IRCTC’s revenue of Rs 1,500 crore came from internet booking which stood at Rs 540 crore.