E-Ticketing Services,

Indian Railways: IRCTC

Computer Application in Management
Assignment
This report aims to study the e-ticketing service provided by IRCTC and
understand the IT implementation concepts associated with it.

By:
Ankita Mishra
Indrani Pradhan
Monisha Sharma
Chandani Chhabra
Bhim Chhetri
 Introduction

This report focuses on various aspects of Indian Railways and its Information Technology (IT)
implementation in the area of Passenger Reservation System. The report first tries to understand
the importance of IT initiatives in the context of Indian Railways and then moves on to the
specific aspects of the Online Passenger Reservation and Ticketing System, implemented and
supported by IRCTC.

Transportation Industries such as Railways operate in a dynamic and constantly changing

environment. This requires a continuous update of information about current status and location
of these assets. Information Resource, thus becomes, a critical managerial tool for confronting
and tackling the business challenges on a real time basis. Transportation industries are also
service industries and they thrive and flourish on Information - rich soil that provides them the
vitally needed link to their customers and other major stakeholders. Railways being multi-
location, multi-functional and multi-divisional organization provide an ideal backdrop for
Computer Networks, which can allow sharing of resources across the Corporation and
information with their customers. Unless, Railways also develop capabilities to harness
information resources through the use of exploding information technology, as other industries
are doing, its continued presence as a viable industry in future may become a question mark. On
the contrary, if the railway system can exploit Information Technology to modernize their
operations and practices to suit the needs of their customers, they can gain tremendous
competitive advantage in the present and future business environment.

The Indian Railways (IR) carries about 5.5 lakh passengers in reserved accommodation every
day. These tickets can be booked or cancelled for journeys commencing in any part of India and
ending in any other part, with travel times as long as 72 hours and distances up to several
thousand kilometers. In this report we will try and analyze how the introduction of IRCTC’s e-
ticketing facility has revolutionized this process.
 About IRCTC
IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) was set by the Ministry of Railways
in 1999 and has since played a huge role in transforming customer experience for buying a
railway ticket. The lengthy queues for booking tickets or black marketing of tickets is no more
the default way of buying tickets.

The following services are provided by IRCTC:

1. Catering: IRCTC is in charge of catering services on trains and railway stations across
India. Depending on the distance covered by the train and average passenger load factor,
the railways either equips trains with their own pantry cars or provides meals at select
stations en route.

2. Online Ticketing: IRCTC is better known for changing the face of railway ticketing in
India. It pioneered Internet-based rail ticket booking through its website, as well as from
mobile phones via GPRS or SMS. Ticket cancellations or modifications can also be done
online. In addition to E-tickets, IRCTC also offers I-tickets that are basically like regular
tickets except that they are booked online and delivered by post.
3. Tourism: IRCTC also organizes budget and deluxe package tours for domestic and
foreign tourists. A popular tourism package for budget tourists covering important tourist
destination across India is Bharat Darshan. Luxury tourism packages are also available,
that involve special luxury trains such as Palace on Wheels, Royal Orient Express etc.

IRCTC has emerged as the Biggest E-Commerce Website in India with revenue of around 250
Cr. every month. The total number of registered users on the website is around 9 million.
Average Daily Booking of Tickets is more than 1,70,000 while the highest number of tickets
Booked on a particular day was 2,26,929. Already IRCTC accounts for around 30% of all the
passenger transactions done by the Indian railways.
 Legacy Systems

The pilot project of PRS was launched on 15 November 1985, over Northern Railway with the
installation of the Integrated Multiple Train Passenger Reservation System (IMPRESS), an
online transaction processing system developed by the Indian Railways in association with
Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC) Ltd., at New Delhi.

The objective was to provide reserved accommodation on any train from any counter,
preparation of train charts and accounting of the money collected. This application was
subsequently implemented in 1987, at Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Secunderabad. With the
addition of new locations and many redefinitions, the IMPRESS system fell short of growing
expectations of the travelling public. Hence a new application software, i.e., Country Wide
Network for Computerized Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing (CONCERT) was developed by
the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), New Delhi primarily using ‘C’ and also
using ‘FORTRAN’. The application was first implemented at the Secunderabad PRS site in
September 1994 and subsequently at the other four PRS sites.

Currently, the PRS servers are maintained at the five sites in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai
and Secunderabad and operate in a distributed database process environment. Communication of
all the terminals with their server was established using Railway/Department of
Telecommunication (DOT) channel lines, fiber-optic cable/microwave channels, switches,
modem, multiplexers etc. The
inter-networking of five PRS nodes was completed in April 1999. Interconnectivity is
established between the five PRS centers over 2 mbps leased Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
(BSNL) lines. The system has the capability of issuing reserved tickets from anywhere to
anywhere, in any train, date, class and between any pair of stations from any booking terminal of
the PRS.

The main modules of the PRS are the Reservation module, the Cancellation and Modification
Module, the Charting Module, the Accounting Module and the Database Module. The
passengers’ request for reservation, cancellation and modification of journey are handled by the
system through requisition slips. Major outputs generated by the system are Reservation cum-
journey tickets, cancellation/Modification tickets, Reservation Charts and Daily Terminal Cash
Summary. The system is also capable of generating different types of Management Information
System (MIS) Reports.
 Present System Overview
The PRS system stores all the data and does all the bookings. The Internet system, developed by
IRCTC, works as a bridge between you and PRS. It takes your query to the PRS, which checks
for availability and does the booking, and displays the results to you. Both the PRS and the
Internet system separately calculate the fare, which are then tallied. If they do not tally, the
transaction is aborted. Otherwise, the Internet system displays the fare, including the courier
charge (Rs 40 for sleeper class, Rs 60 for upper classes), to you. Your ticket gets booked (on the
PRS) only once the payment gateway tells the Internet system that the payment has been
successful. As a next step, the payment gateway and the PRS give the authorization codes to the
Internet system. The PRS also gives it a PNR number. You are then presented a PNR number
and an IRCTC transaction id, using which you can track the status of the delivery of your ticket.

Once the booking has been done, the PRS authorization code goes to the printing stations, which
run both the PRS system and IRCTC system in different windows. An operator manually copies
the PRS authorization from the IRCTC system and pastes it on to the PRS system, which then
prints the ticket. An admin module helps distribute this workload and do reconciliations.
 Hardware Platforms
 The E-ticketing system deploys approximately 100 SUN Microsystems(now owned by
Oracle Corporation) Servers

 The Servers use x86 based Xeon series Intel processors which are basically 32 bit
processors wherein each system is customized to handle maximum processing while
occupying min. space.
 The servers are composed of test servers which are used to test applications & syste
protocols & policies before being put on main serves, application servers which are used
to do the information processing for data relating to front end application & portal,
transaction server & gateways which are used to route payment from credit cards to
IRCTC account & provide a secure communication passage, actual web servers handling
the incoming & outgoing traffic from & to the internet
 The application and database management components run on four separate four-way
servers powered by Pentium III Xeon processors in addition to four Pentium III
processors that power the Web servers
 The main servers including web servers, application servers, transaction servers &
gateways are housed in Delhi office with some ticket processing & printing facilities also
housed in Mumbai to cater to the extensive local railway use there.
All the Data since the starting date in 2002 is stored using combination of manual & automatic
data backup policies for data analytics & refunding cases.
 Network Architecture

Delhi PRS kolkata PRS

2 MBPS (x2) Leased 2 MBPS (x2) Leased
Line Line6

2 MBPS (x2) Leased

Mumbai PRS Line

Secunderabad PRS
2 MBPS Leased Line

2 MBPS Leased Line Delhi

2 MBPS (X 2) Leased Calcutta

Line

Mumbai
SecBad

Chennai PRS
Chennai

 The System consists of 5 main PRS servers located in Delhi, Kolkata, Secunderabad,
Chennai and Mumbai which are used to do that actual real time booking of the ticket
according to the request. The e –ticketing system sends a booking request to the nearest
free PRS server
 The servers are connected via 2 Mbps leased lines i.e. the service provider can have no
other data on those lines, which provide enough speed according to current data
requirements with backups to provide continuous service to the customers & the systems.
Backend for actual real time ticket booking is maintained by CRIS (Centre for Railway
Information Systems)
 Software Systems

 The system consists of a three tier architecture including the base operating server
system, a database handling application and a server application to handle record &
manage the incoming & outgoing data from the internet & provide an application
development platform for the same.
 The server service is provided through IIS (Internet Information Server) 6.0 on Windows
Server 2003 as the base operating system
 Broadvision 7.1 AB Enterprise Edition developed by Broadvision Inc, California on
Windows 2000 Advanced Sever at Application Servers Layer and serves the purpose of
web application layer
 Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition on Linux AS 4.0 Server with Oracle RAC at Database
Server Layer which serves to implement ERP for the internal administrative system
 Mail Gateway Protection with Trend/Micro Interscan Messaging Security Suite (IMSS)
 CA and Symantec Antivirus systems for servers and desktops to prevent any compromise
of the system though server & laptop and they are regularly updated using update serves
whose sole purpose is to maintain up to date antivirus in each system
 Security system in via billdesk payment gateway – The system build on BroadVision
uses 128-bit encryption to secure payment transactions & doesn’t store any credit card
details to prevent card number theft
 Tech Tree IT Systems work involves providing IRCTC with upgrades, patches and bug
supports for the BroadVision software installation. The modules maintained are
BroadVision One-to-One Enterprise, Publishing Center, Command Center and Instant
Publisher.
 Applications

 Booking & cancellation of ticket online – A simple, intuitive & secure interface to book
& cancel your tickets online wherein you can create your account, put in your details &
then use various payment options to book your ticket. You can also cancel your ticket
online & get the money refunded to your bank account instantly.
 Checking PNR status – Check the current status of your booking using PNR reference,
check if the charts have been prepared, your current status in waiting list, etc.
 Tatkal Booking of tickets
 Getting a SBI Railway card
 Mobile Booking – IRCTC plans to leverage on the existing E- ticketing system by
providing the existing web service through both fixed & mobile phones. For cellphones,
you can have both SMS and IVR (voice) based booking services, while for the landlines,
the service will be over voice.
o Such complex systems which involve speech recognition are quite popular
abroad, but their deployments in India are still fairly low. 
o The application runs on HP Proliant servers, on BroadVision's One-to-One
Enterprise e-commerce platform. A combination of Tomcat and Apache running
on Windows is used to provide the web services to the operators
o The concerned operators have to build their own application for making the
service available to their customers. Many including Hutch, Airtel, Idea &
Reliance have already joined the fray.
The Mobile booking facility is currently available only in the NCR region; also the delivery is
restricted to the NCR as a pilot project. Eventually the service would be moved nationally.

SMS booking – This is a yet to be launched service by IRCTC. In this service you can book your
ticket with two short SMSs. It is going to be introduced soon. Given below is a sample SMS
transaction.

The SMS conversation sequence between the user

and the IRCTC
o
First SMS by user:
PLAN 
Example: PLAN Amishra Amishra123 1081 CSTM
PUNE 10/05/2005 SL LIST2.

Reply from IRCTC: 

Ticket fare:Rs 161.0, Availability
status:AVAILABLE 0228, SMS TXN ID:501. Pls
send sms BOOKPAY SMSTXN ID ICICIBANK
MSHOPNAME to 7245 to book ticket.

Note : SMS transaction ID identifies a particular

SMS instruction to the relevant transaction in the
IRCTC database
Electronic Reservation Slip and Status Enquiry System

IRCTCs e-Ticketing Service Electronic Reservation Slip

 Manpower Deployed

 The E – ticketing system is maintained jointly by IRCTC & Broadvision

 The total manpower deployed in E – ticketing is approximately 200
o 40-50 core personnel involved in server maintenance & upkeep
o A team of approx 90-100 people involved in developing front end applications &
web portal
o A team of 60 people in call center for general enquiry & booking.
 The core team of E - ticketing is headed by Mr. Sanjay Aggarwal (General Manager,
Operation). He is assisted by 5-6 Managers followed by general staff.
 The core Broadvision team consists of a Team Leader and 9-10 other database &
networking professionals.

Budget for E – Ticketing System

The overall cost in running the e-ticketing system including hardware cost, software licenses,
human resources, etc. excluding the cost of land on which data center is present is approximately
100 crore in 2008-09
The hardware installed alone is worth around 60-70 crore.
Around 3889 crore of revenue was generated from sale of tickets for the year 2008-09
 Awards and Recognition

 Awarded with National Tourism Award of Excellence by Ministry of Tourism, Govt.

of India
  Awarded the National Award for E-Governance, 2007-08 jointly by Department of IT,
Govt. of India  and Govt. of Haryana
  Awarded the Genius of the Web Award 2007 for Best E-Gov PSU Site by CNBC
  IRCTC Tourism Unit of West Zone has been awarded the Winner for the Category Best
Value Leisure Product in Travel and Tourism Fair of India i.e. TTF & OTM 2008 held
in Mumbai from 9th to 11th  February 2008
 National award for E-Governance Best Citizen Centric Application for the year 2007-
08.
  IRCTC Tourism Unit has been awarded the Winner for the Category Most Innovative
Product in Travel and Tourism Fair of India i.e. TTF & OTM 2007 held in Mumbai
from 10th to 12th  February 2007
  CSI-Nihilent E-Governance award for Best E-Governance Project in 2007
 ICICI bank Retail Excellence Award in 2005
  Path Breaker Award from Dataquest in 2004
 Path Breaker Award from Dataquest in 2003
 Future Challenges

While the number of customers and transactions will definitely go up because of the monopoly
factor, IRCTC has outlined a number of plans, which prove that the company doesn’t believe in
resting on its laurels. Plans are on the anvil to cater to the corporate sector, wherein companies
can sign up on the site and book tickets for employees through a single account.
Besides, IRCTC intends to expand its travel portal to leverage BroadVision’s advanced
personalization capabilities to the fullest extent. In the next phase, IRCTC’s travel portal will add
other tourism and reservation touch-points and expand ticket delivery services to all major cities
in India.
Their target is to provide Internet booking and delivery service to a total of 100 cities and focus
on improving facilities with value-added services.
IRCTC has realized that payment through mobile is a hot trend and picking up fast and is now
looking at taking this route—soon you should be able to book tickets from your mobile itself.
Besides mobile payment Credit cards, net banking, pre paid schemes are going to be next big
thing.
Catering to businesses (B2B) is also going to be another big area of focus for IRCTC. Opening
more outlets and kiosks for people not too tech savvy people is also going to be on the agenda as
the idea has been a success in the past.
Analysis from the existing data shows that usage of the facilities in the Tier2, Tier3 cities are
growing at a faster rate than metro cities. So, IRCTC has to improve their volumes in metro and
utilize the fast growth rate in Tier2, Tier3 cities.
As far as the service goes IRCTC is trying to make the facility available 24 hrs and the ticket
disbursement on a real time basis so that the tickets reach people on time. Also IRCTC has to
design a new system to handle the peak capacity of 3 lakh tickets per day. IRCTC is planning to
float a tender for new contract.