IRCTC’s shopping website gets live, plans to snap up Rs 200 crore in next one year

Government-owned railway ticketing portal IRCTC has launched its online retail website shop.irctc.co.in. Currently, the website showcases over 30,000 products across seven categories, named men, women, home and kitchen, electronics, and so forth. It offers more than 500 brands such as Puma, Adidas, Nike, BIBA, Catwalk, in apparel section, and Micromax, Sony, Philips amongst others in the mobile and electronics section.

The portal also offers Value pick section, which enables you to access deals spanning price points. Deals include: T-shirts @ Rs 169, and slippers @ Rs 194. The website offers all plastic card based payment options and Cash on Delivery (COD) including EMI facility.

Unlike other etailers, Shop.irctc.in doesn’t offer details like shipping duration, social media, and wishlist icons on its home page. Earlier this year, IRCTC partnered with Yebhi to develop and manage its online shopping platform.

Speaking about the partnership with IRCTC, Manmohan Agarwal, CEO Yebhi.com, said “We are thrilled to partner with IRCTC, India’s largest ecommerce website, and look forward to this mutually beneficial association. With this association, IRCTC is getting a ready-made supply chain with all products, offering at one go, powered by Yebhi.com and at the same time Yebhi.com is able to reach out Real India that starts from tier 2 and tier 3 cities and goes deep into tier 4 and 5 cities.” The joint venture plans to do over Rs 200 crore business in the first year.

At present, IRCTC gets close to 1.2 million daily visits, generating 180 million transactions every year, thus making it the largest ecommerce site in the country. And launching an online retail site with such association makes a lot of sense to IRCTC as it has potential to reach its 2 crore registered users without burning much capital on advertising. However, given that most of ecommerce companies have been struggling to achieve profitability, road for IRCTC and Yebhi wouldn’t be easy.