IRCTC records over half a million ticket bookings

Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) booked over half a million e-tickets on Wednesday. This is the highest number booked through the website in a single day.

The earlier record was set on September 2, 2012, when the online ticket portal of Indian Railways booked 572,000 tickets.

Currently, the site books 463,000 tickets in a day, compared to the average of 385,000 tickets booked in a day in 2013. That is a growth of 20 per cent year-over-year. This translates into a daily transaction of more than Rs 53 crore currently, as against Rs 37 crore in 2013.

In an effort to tackle consumer complaints regarding the slow speed of the website, IRCTC recently launched IRCTC Lite during tatkal booking hours. This service paid dividends in the form of increased number of bookings during the tatkal period, registering a jump of 40 per cent since February, said a press release by IRCTC.

"Our aim is to increase the booking rate to more than 7,000 tickets per minute from its present rate of 2,000 tickets and ultimately to make the site capable of handling 120,000 users at any point of time, as compared to its existing capacity of 40,000 users," a senior IRCTC official said.