foodpanda to enter into a partnership with IRCTC

foodpanda, India’s largest online food ordering platform proposes to associate with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the Indian railways. The association will enable consumers to order meals of their choice through foodpanda’s aggregator model, and allow them to order from a wide variety of cuisine options. To ensure that food reaches consumers in the best condition, foodpanda will deploy its own delivery fleet to fulfil all deliveries.

The pilot of this proposed association is being planned to be launched at the New Delhi Railway station and after successful roll out in the metro city, the service will be extended to more cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in due course of time. The customers will have the choice to order meals at-least 2 hours in advance of the travel. The delivery will be aligned to the train arrival time at the station and consumers can pay for the order in advance online or make on the spot cash payment as per their convenience.

Speaking about the association, foodpanda CEO Saurabh Kochhar, Said, “Foodpanda is an innovative business model which caters to an important consumer need. Our association with IRCTC will be an offering which addresses a huge consumer need prevailing for years. For long, consumers had limited food options to choose from while travelling with Indian railways but the newly launched e-catering service by IRCTC (approved by Ministry of Railways) is set to change the way Indians eat while travelling. We are excited to begin action with the Delhi station by December and are looking forward to extending this offering to other stations like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in due course of time.”

Robin Kalita, Director, Catering Services, IRCTC, “At IRCTC, it has been our endeavour to extend best possible services to our passengers. Food forms a very important part of the travel experience and IRCTC takes immense care to offer healthy and hygienic food to its travellers on-board. With progressing times, we aim to offer wider choices to our consumers and are extremely thankful to foodpanda to have offered partnership with us. We are happy that we will be able to offer wider food choices to our consumers with this association and once our pilot project is successful, we will extend the service to more locations.”