IRCTC - Most successful eCommerce site in India!

Trust the Indian Railways to spring surprises! The largest rail network in the world by volume of traffic and literally the backbone of India. Business Standard reported today that, IRCTC was the most successful eCommerce site in India, generating 30% of India's eCommerce revenues.
The organization that first captured the imagination of Indians with a countrywide Information Technology system, the passenger ticket reservation system, has done it again, this time helping Indians book tickets online. Many years ago, while I was at CMC Ltd. (earlier a public sector company, now a part of TCS) the software, network and site maintenance activities for this humongous system (with a catchy name - IMPRESS), was a training ground for many CMC engineers to get trained on a world-class system. Built on a network of Digital's VAX computers, it was the flagship project of the company.

IRCTC, another public sector organization, under the Ministry of Railways first rolled out their e-Ticketing system on 2nd Aug, 2002. I have been using this site ever since and have seen them make improvements, add payment methods, ticket tracking, delivery mechanisms and travel history features over the years. Here's a list of the achievements of IRCTC's eCommerce site since it was first deployed 7 years ago.

• Transactions increased from 220 tickets on the 1st day to 1.1 L/day now; 2.5 M tickets in a month
• Participates in 14% of 800,000 daily seat/berth bookings of the Indian Railways
• Last year 35.2 M passengers travelled on nearly 18.9 M tickets bought online
• Ticketing revenues have gone from 27.16 Cr in 02-03 to 1800 Cr in 07-08
• Revenues projected to be 3500 Cr in 08-09
• Growth rates - 130% per year!!
• Payments - 38% thru credit cards, 30% Cash Cards, 29% Net Banking and 2% thru Redeem PG and Rolling Deposit Scheme for frequent travellers and travel agents
• A large percentage of tickets are booked online from the BIMARU states, especially UP, Bihar

IRCTC has shown that its not just a private sector company or a MNC that can roll out a world-class system. Get the best people together, give them the best resources, let them work without any political interference and the team delivers. CMC, CRIS, IRCTC have demonstrated that they too can roll out a great system, make it highly available, provide good customer service & delivery systems and increase revenues 130% yoy. IRCTC has also shown that eCommerce succeeds when a solid business and a product to sell already exist! Kudos to them and an inspiration for all sectors - public and private.

If the Indian Railways were to be inspired by IRCTC, improve their train services, passenger amenities, timeliness and the travel experience, it would go a long way to bring middle-class passengers back to the rail system and decrease the chaos and pollution on India's roads.