Ahmedabad: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the railways’ online ticketing, tourism and catering arm which is going to run two private Tejas trains in the country soon, today said that it would also participate in bidding for more such ventures in the future.
Addressing a press conference here today on the occasion of the announcement of the launch of its Initial Public Offering (IPO), in a bid to raise approximately Rs 645 crore at the upper end of the price band, CMD of the IRCTC M P Mall said that first of the two private Tejas trains to be run by us (between Lucknow and Delhi) would be flag off on October 4 and after around two months of it ie in December this year the second one between Ahmedabad and Mumbai would also start plying.

‘Like the one between Lucknow and Delhi, the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas would also run on six days of the week. It will start from Ahmedabad in the morning and return from Mumbai in the late afternoon. It would be costlier by 10% with dynamic pricing linked to air-fare would also be applied. We have not yet decided the off-day for Ahmedabad- Mumbai train. Recently the chairman railway board had also announced that private trains would also be run on 120 more routes and IRCTC would certainly study the proposals and participate in the bidding,’ the CMD said.
He also said that the company which was mainly in to four business catering, online ticketing, tour and travel and packaged water (Rail Neer), was diversifying to enter in to other areas. Its largest revenue chunk comes from catering at around 55% followed by Tour and Travel at 23.38%, Internet Ticketing 12.35% and water business 9.28%.

To a query he said that the company mostly uses single use plastic for water bottles and would certainly change it for the national and global cause. ‘We will certainly do away with single use plastic even though it would be slightly costly,’ he said.

He said that the company was also involved in to redesigning of around 700 pantry cars and also setting up 10 more water plants.
Notably the IPO, with a price band of Rs 315 to Rs 320 per equity share, will open on September 30, 2019 and close on October 3, 2019. The issue comprises an offer for sale of 2,01,60,000 shares of face value of Rs 10 each by the President of India, acting through the Ministry of Railways (The Selling Shareholder). Out of the total issue size, 1,60,000 equity shares are reserved for eligible employees. The Company has offered a discount of Rs 10 per Equity Share on the Offer Price for the retail category and to eligible employees. The Company will not receive any proceeds from the Offer and all proceeds shall go to the Selling Shareholder.

DeshGujarat