Bold pricing experiments help railways fare better

The railways, in Sept last year, had introduced dynamic pricing in the Rajdhani, Shatabdi & Duronto

The Indian Railways, over the past few years, has delinked fares on a number of trains from the normal ticket-price structure, taking a step towards market-linked rates.
 

In continuance with this trend, the railways in September last year had introduced dynamic pricing in the Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains, by which the fares increased with each 10% of the tickets sold. However, this did not earn much revenue.

The railways revised the structure after a review in December. “We decided to give a 10% discount on the last ticket purchased through tatkal after first charting,” said Mohammad Jamshed, member (traffic).