IRCTC

Freight loading rose 4% year on year to 142.21 million tonnes in June 2026 and passenger traffic reached 63.81 crore, with non-suburban long- and short-distance travel up 3.9% and premium capacity expanding — Vande Bharat services now at 164, Amrit Bharat at 72, including a new Howrah–Kamakhya sleeper.

A platform positions itself around the full rail-journey lifecycle — IRCTC-authorised booking plus repeated PNR-status checking and live updates in one place — leaning on the habitual, days-long waiting phase of unconfirmed tickets as a recurring engagement hook rather than a one-time transaction.

A CRIS-built 'super app' now consolidates reserved, unreserved and platform ticketing, PNR status, live train tracking, e-catering, R-Wallet payments and Rail Madad complaints behind a single login, absorbing the functions previously split across IRCTC Rail Connect, UTS on Mobile and Food on Track since its July 2025 launch.

Indian Railways is replacing its 40-year-old Passenger Reservation System with a cloud-based platform launching July 15, 2026, scaling IRCTC booking capacity from 32,000 to 1.5 lakh tickets per minute and enquiry capacity from 4 lakh to 40 lakh per minute, with phased infrastructure rollout from August. The upgraded system adds AI-driven waitlist prediction at 94% accuracy, a fare calendar, multilingual interface, and seat selection — features that currently differentiate OTA front-ends.

Indian Railways is replacing its 1986-era Passenger Reservation System with a new AI-powered platform launching in phased migration from August 2026, capable of handling over five lakh ticket transactions per minute. The new system integrates waitlist confirmation prediction at 94% accuracy (up from 53%), is closely tied to the RailOne app which already processes 9.29 lakh daily bookings, and continues the IRCTC authentication hardening trajectory including Aadhaar verification for Tatkal and general reserved windows.

IRCTC's CMD Sanjay Kumar Jain has flagged 20% tourism revenue growth as a target for FY27, anchored by expansion of Vande Bharat Sleeper and Amrit Bharat services and record inbound demand on premium offerings like the Maharajas' Express. The business mix is gradually shifting toward tourism and digital segments as higher-end rail products generate packaging and yield opportunities beyond bare ticketing.

IRCTC recorded an average of 14.53 lakh daily online ticket bookings in FY2025-26, up from 13.88 lakh the prior year, while simultaneously deactivating 3.03 crore suspicious user IDs and placing 6.05 crore more under Aadhaar-linked revalidation. AI/ML systems now actively monitor Tatkal windows for bulk booking patterns, disposable email use, and anomalous typing speeds.

IRCTC has expanded its AI food quality monitoring programme across railway catering operations alongside the fraud crackdown, using computer vision and sensor-based tools to flag hygiene violations at pantry cars and station food stalls. The initiative is part of a broader push to modernise IRCTC's non-ticketing revenue lines.