9:07 AM Mon 18 Mar 2X jump from last year. On average, the aggregator takes about 22% commission on every order from listed restaurants. Growing presence Zoop has 600 listed restaurants, delivers to 180 stations, and processes about 70,000 monthly orders INNING. Another travel-tech startup and IRCTC-partnered food aggregator, Railofy, delivers 60,000 orders every month—up from approximately 25,000 per month during the same time last year, said Rohan Dedhia, the company’s founder. N 6 | Aa9:08 AM Mon 18 Mar Fe 56%) Besides e-catering, IRCTC provides static and mobile catering services. Static catering units include food plazas, fast food units, and refreshment rooms at station premises. The mobile catering segment provides onboard catering services to passengers through pantry cars (with onboard storage, reheating, and cooling facilities) in the trains or through train side vending (| TSV |) in trains that do not have pantry cars. As of March, IRCTC provided onboard catering services in 474 trains and through TSV in 713 trains. But e-catering is a relatively better option, given making food on a moving train is not easy, said an executive who helped build the digital infrastructure for IRCTC’s e-catering. They did not want to be named because they are not authorised to speak with the media. “When trains reach their destination, they are usually parked in a yard, which is an open ground, and chances of infestation are high,” he said, adding that it’s a challenging environment to operate in and not humanly easy. The 15% commission that IRCTC charges aggregators is in addition to | GST and a refundable security amount of Rs 2 lakh (US$2,413). Such partnerships are valid for three years, after which an aggregator should renew the partnership. Questions sent to IRCTC on 11 March didn't elicit a response, and a request for an interview with its managing director was declined. While e-catering is growing tremendously as a segment, the complexity of delivering food on trains is hard to overstate. Missing the train When a passenger places an order, the estimated arrival time of a train at the Q i < oO Aa9:08 AM Mon 18 Mar Fe 56% E) desired station has to be roughly equal to the time it takes to prepare, pack, and deliver the food, said the executive quoted above. The handover window is just 5 minutes. Once the PNR is entered, the system saves the passenger’s train, coach, and seat number and tracks whether the journey is currently running or a future one. “If it’s running, then we compute the estimated arrival time of the train and compare all the restaurants and food aggregators in that station. Passengers will only see the places available to deliver,” the executive explained. Then, the system takes the order within the cutoff period, which is 30 minutes; it won’t take an order before 15 minutes of train arrival, they added. “The order is then held, and the train running status is tracked. If the system is confident that the train is running on time, the order is then moved to the restaurant.” Zoop receives orders from different channels: Whatsapp and IRCTC or its own website and app. These orders are stacked in one dashboard and sent to the restaurant before the train arrives. Usually, the restaurants manage the deliveries unless an aggregator provides a fleet. “We only provide IRCTC-approved ID cards to these delivery partners,” said Sharma, adding that the company has a 97% success rate in delivering food. (All unsuccessful deliveries are refunded.) Lokanathan, who, on average, travels via train six times every year, has almost always received his food on time. Except once, when his train was delayed by 45 minutes, the delivery partner had to wait at the station, and the food got soggy. A few other passengers The Ken spoke with, too, echoed the sentiment. W 6 OF Aa9:08 AM Mon 18 Mar Fe 56% —E ) Raizada said the delivery person cannot afford to arrive late or early for on- train food deliveries, unlike with home deliveries. “If a train gets late beyond a reasonable time, then we feel handicapped,” said the executive. “As per the rules, online food deliveries aren't allowed between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. in trains.” Raizada said adequate time buffers must be planned to avoid an order failure. “But this increases the turnaround time of delivery, which is becoming longer,” he said, adding that this also hampers the utilisation of delivery personnel. “We have tried to introduce train tracking.” “[But] train movements are not always predictable, and sometimes, these trains have to wait at the outer perimeter of a station. Besides, the same train may arrive at a different platform number.” Curating the train-food menu is another beast. One has to select only those items that can be easily packed, transported—and, more importantly, unpacked and consumed—since not everything is “train-friendly,” he added. For example, someone wouldn’t provide rasam as a food item in train deliveries as it may spill over. Then, items with curd as an ingredient may go bad during summer and in case of train delays. He said the availability of storage infra, including heating or refrigeration, at railway stations would help. “This would have to be complemented by a common delivery team at the station who can deliver these boxes to the passengers based on the actual arrival sequence of the trains,” he added. Aggregators also get bulk orders. To handle logistics better and ensure timely delivery, “IRCTC has the rule to im aa < f Aa9:08 AM Mon 18 Mar Fe 56%) onboard only restaurants within a radius of 5 km because, in most cases, we deliver orders in half an hour,” said Vignesh Pothina, CEO of Relfood, an Andhra Pradesh-based food aggregator. Ensuring these deliveries are shipshape, Railofy, launched in 2019, became a full-stack player from being an aggregator. “We realised the logistics is not just about the delivery fleet when it comes to food delivery in trains but also the station-side logistics and manufacturing food to the delivery timelines,” he said, adding that they now can control the food quality and optimise the delivery time in trains. Dedhia claims the food aggregator’s success rate is 99.5%. Express deliveries Covering 30 stations, Railofy has 10 cloud kitchens named Hotplate Express, which specialises in e-catering and accounts for 60% of Railofy’s total orders WINNING. It also has 50+ restaurant partners, including Haldiram’s and Subway, which pay about 35% of per order cost as commission (including logistics). Zomato and Swiggy’s entry into e-catering promises higher passenger awareness and segment expansion, yet custom platforms and services will be essential for their success, according to Raizada. Are logistics on your plate? ‘ixed customer locations, Home deliveries come with three key advantage: W < O Aa9:08 AM Mon 18 Mar Fe 5%E) flexible availability, and ready dining setups, as per Raizada. These don’t apply to train deliveries—a tech platform is needed to manage them at scale. Ravi Sethia, a passenger who regularly uses e-catering service, has previously placed orders using the Zomato app while travelling. For him, the uncertainty around food delivery inside the train or on the platform has been a key concern. Amit Ranjan, a resident of Gorakhpur, now prefers calling the restaurant directly over ordering via Zomato. “The food charge is already inflated in Zomato by 20-30%. Apart from taxes and delivery charges, it also charged me Rs 50 (US$0.6) for the station convenience fee,” said Ranjan, who placed three orders via Zomato. However, that’s not the case for other IRCTC-partnered aggregators and restaurants. Unlike Zomato, taxes are relatively lower, with no additional delivery and station convenience fees, as revealed by The Ken’s attempts to order meals at five different railway stations. The Ken reached out to Rebel Foods, Domino’s, Zomato, Swiggy, and Haldiram’s. Zomato declined to comment on the subject, and the rest didn’t respond to the queries. Sharma thinks the players who have been in the e-catering game longer have some leverage over the two food delivery giants—ground-level knowledge, technology, and completely customised processes for train food deliveries. This sets them apart. Secondly, Raizada said Swiggy and Zomato may need to implement custom technology and explicit integration in cities where they do not already have a strong presence. W 6 a] Aa:09 AM Mon 18 Mar Fe 5%E) He added that the current volume of e-catering orders may not move the needle for the two companies. In the short term, that applies to even IRCTC since e-catering contributed merely 1.6% to the total catering revenue in the year ended March 2023. So, how much growth has Zomato, now catering to 22 railway railway stations, seen? An analyst asked during IRCTC’s earnings call in February. “Number doesn’t matter,” said IRCTC’s chairman Jain. “What I see is to create a network so that first you put the system in place and then with your strength of the network, you create the stability in the market and confidence in the customer. That’s what we have to be looking for.” Jain’s view on building consumer confidence may just be the food for thought that IRCTC needs. After all, the number of meals ordered using the company’s e-catering offerings is a mere 0.2% of the 20 million passengers travelling every day. Zomato and Swiggy’s vast restaurant networks could boost IRCTC’s e-catering segment, but in the long term, fixing the bad-food problem will depend only on nailing the train logistics. For now, at least, you will have more options when you’re on the train wondering, “What’s for lunch/dinner?”