Deals, deals, deals!
The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has partnered with coupon site Mydala to offer deals and offers across categories like food & beverages, beauty, health & wellness, tattoos & retail shopping to its customers, reports YourStory. The new site will be accessible at: http://www.mydala.irctc.co.in/. Users will be able to make use of the deals while booking train tickets, the report adds.
It is not clear how IRCTC will monetise these transactions. We’ve reached out to Mydala for information and will update the article once we hear from them.
Flashback FYI: On 1 April this year, the IRCTC witnessed a grand booking of 1.3 million tickets on its portal, the same day when the 120-day advance booking rule came into effect. The TOI had reported that last month, IRCTC clocked 1.1 million ticket bookings on 2 April.
IRCTC’s mega-modernisation seems to be a part of this year’s Railway Budget. This partnership might turn out to be a massive win for Mydala since IRCTC sees over 1.2 million users everyday. Mydala claims to have over 4 million ‘transacting customers’ every month and processes over 6.6 million transactions per month, of which 80% come from mobile platforms. The company told Medianama that it sees 50 million unique visitors monthly and has ~25 million registered users. The IRCTC also has over 20 million registered users and for Mydala, capitalising on those, especially in Tier II and III cities, will be way easier post this partnership.
In March this year, Mydala partnered with Airtel to provide deals and offers to its subscribers when recharging their accounts using the ‘My Airtel’ mobile app. In September last year, Mydala launched a grocery vertical for its website and mobile app. The website claimed that the service would allow shoppers to view offers on grocery items from local kirana stores.
IRCTC is ramping up majorly, customers win
– Earlier this month, IRCTC added Paytm wallet as an option for its users to pay for train tickets online. Through this partnership, Paytm would be able to expand its reach to Tier II and Tier III markets, like Mydala, where trains form the primary mode of long distance travel and IRCTC the default train booking platform.
– In March, IRCTC roped in Pizza Hut and KFC in order to deliver pre-ordered meals to its passengers. Passengers would need to order the food from the IRCTC website 48 hours prior to the date of the journey after which a password would be sent to the passenger’s mobile phone from the vendor.
– In the same month, IRCTC also partnered with Union Bank of India (UBI) to offer a RuPay prepaid card which would let users book train tickets and buy goods or services from the IRCTC portal. The card was developed jointly by IRCTC, UBI and National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI).
– IRCTC also tied up with Amazon.in to sell various products to IRCTC customers. However, the products were not sold on IRCTC’s website, instead clicking on ‘Shop by Amazon’ redirected users to Amazon.in, which sported an IRCTC logo on it.
– Earlier in February, IRCTC tied-up with Jubilant Foodworks to deliver Dominos’ pizza to the passengers’ seats if they were traveling across selected stations in India. In the same month, Last month, IRCTC tied-up with BookMyTrain.com to introduce cash on delivery (CoD) payment mode for buying train tickets.
– IRCTC had also introduced an EMI for train tickets last year.
