IRCTC’s Revenue Engine Explained

Every long-distance rail journey in India has an invisible operator working behind the scenes.

It’s not the Indian Railways itself, which handles the trains, tracks, and timetables, but the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, better known as IRCTC.

Set up as a subsidiary of the Ministry of Railways, IRCTC is responsible for the business ecosystem surrounding rail travel: ticketing, catering, tourism services, and packaged drinking water.

The scale of the platform is difficult to ignore.

Around 83% of all reserved train tickets in India are booked online today, and of these, 80% move through IRCTC’s system.

IRCTC today has over 10 crore registered users - a number that puts it on par with some of India’s biggest tech platforms.

A convenience fee, typically ranging from ₹15 to ₹30 per ticket, is charged on each booking - a small slice individually but significant when multiplied across more than a million tickets sold daily.

This fee is a key source of steady income for the company.

In financial terms, IRCTC processes over $4 billion in ticketing transactions every year.

But ticketing is only one piece of a broader operational puzzle.

The company also runs catering and tourism businesses, which add significantly to its overall revenue.

For FY24, catering revenue was reported at over ₹1,200 crore, with tourism adding more than ₹1,000 crore.

Rail Neer, IRCTC’s packaged water brand, contributed over ₹300 crore, despite its retail price of ₹15 per litre remaining unchanged since 2012 - a figure held down by public sector price controls, even as input costs have risen steadily over the years.

Behind the scenes, IRCTC operates 19 Rail Neer bottling plants across India, securing a continuous supply of Rail Neer for all trains and stations nationwide.

The company’s operational reach extends across 1,265 trains with IRCTC-managed catering, 305 food plazas, and 141 refreshment rooms.

IRCTC commands a 15% share of food delivery orders made through third-party aggregators, further cementing its control over the railway food ecosystem.

Numbers tell the story best. IRCTC’s revenue climbed from ₹782 crore in FY21 to more than ₹4,200 crore in FY24.

Profits went from ₹189 crore to over ₹1,100 crore in the same period.

Today, it’s a company valued at more than ₹60,000 crore, putting it among the most valuable railway-linked stocks anywhere in the world.

Still, IRCTC doesn’t have full control. It moves within the limits set by the government.

The government still holds 62.4% of IRCTC, which means decisions, especially around pricing, don’t always follow market logic.

Want to raise the price of Rail Neer by a rupee? That’ll require a green light from Delhi.

In many ways, IRCTC walks a tightrope, balancing the pressures of scale, public service, and profitability.

But at its core, IRCTC is a public-sector company operating with the DNA of a tech-enabled platform.

IRCTC doesn’t run the trains. But in almost every other sense, it runs the show.

Sources:

Indiadispatch.com
Livemint
The Hindu
Money Control
Statista
Screener
Tijori Finance