Providing more options to book train tickets, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) along with Microsoft has developed IRCTC App for Windows-8, which will facilitate users with a new channel of booking e-tickets in addition to the existing portal.
IRCTC App on Windows-8 is going to be launched tomorrow, said a senior IRCTC official.
Currently, the e-ticketing website of IRCTC is booking more than four lakh tickets per day on an average. "A record 5.72 lakh online train tickets were booked on September 2 this year surpassing the earlier 5.04 lakh on August 12, the highest in a single day for the Railways so far.
With the launch of IRCTC App on Windows-8 for train travellers, the booking of e-tickets is expected to increase considerably.
IRCTC has booked 135 lakh e-tickets at an average of 4.34 lakh each day in August this year against a total of 123 lakh e-tickets at an average of 3.99 lakh daily in the same period last year, registering an increase of about 10 per cent in booking.
The overall daily average booking was around 3.85 lakhs last year.
Outlining IRCTC's plans in his 2013-14 Rail Budget speech, the then Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said the website would be revamped to book 7,200 tickets per minute, up from the current volume of 2,000 tickets, and handle 1.2 lakh customers at any given time against the present capacity to take in approximately 40,000 hits.
Electronic tickets account for approximately 48 per cent of the tickets sold every day, earning close to Rs 37 crore daily, making the website figure in the list of top ranking e-commerce sites in the country.
