Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp. is targeting a growth of 10% across its four business verticals in FY26, according to Chairperson Sanjay Jain.
"In catering, we would like to grow around 9% to 10%. And tourism, we would like to grow by 15%," he told NDTV Profit in a conversation on Friday. "Overall, at the IRCTC level in all the four segments, we are targeting to grow by 10%."
IRCTC's four major business segments are internet ticketing, tourism, catering and Rail Neer.
The company's growth strategy is underpinned by the broader expansion of India's railway infrastructure.
"A large number of trains are going to be introduced… Our challenge is how to capture that, not the business or the demand side. Rail Neer, we already have demands, we are not able to fulfil or grab that demand," the managing director said.
A key initiative for FY26 is the launch of a unified online travel agency portal to streamline booking and travel solutions for passengers, the CMD revealed, while emphasising the PSU's commitment to affordability.
"Our IT business is giving a margin of around 80% and all other business segments are giving a margin of around 12%. Our Rail Neer is also subsidised, it is being sold at Rs 15," the top executive underlined.
"So, we want to make everything affordable for the masses. It's not about only making profit," he added. "So we are happy if we are able to increase this product mix and earn an Ebitda of around 30%."
IRCTC plans to collaborate with the Railway Land Development Authority to establish 30 to 35 budget hotels in the years to come with an investment of over Rs 600 crore.
Outlining the business model, he explained that IRCTC's model is public-private partnership, where it supports the hoteliers to create the infrastructure and to run it.
"We have the market and the land. We invest in their basic infrastructure. We take the expertise of these people in running the show, in operationalizing this thing," Jain explained. "And that's our model, which is working very nicely at the moment."
While FY26 will see initial steps through tendering, significant progress is expected from FY27 and FY28 onwards.
IRCTC is also scaling up its Rail Neer packaged water business. The Indian Railways' hospitality arm plans to double the capacity of its plants in Danapur (Bihar) and Ambernath (Maharashtra). Four additional plants are in the pipeline. The expansion plans have been approved by the board of directors.
IRCTC plans to extend its e-catering services. It already operates at over 400 stations in partnership with 20 aggregators, including major food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato.
Jain clarified that the seemingly flat performance in the catering business was due to an exceptional one-off event business item of Aastha Express amounting to around Rs 30 crore. "If we subset that, then the revenue growth in catering also appears to be reasonable," he said.
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