Foodpanda has tied up with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which handles catering, tourism and online ticketing operations for Indian Railways to make it convenient for traveling passengers to order their choice of food online.
The menus are selected from more than 12,000 restaurants across over 200 cities. Passengers have the option of pre-ordering their food which will be available at the nearest railway station. The food will need to be preordered a minimum of 2 hours in advance from the train arrival time and will be delivered by an arm of Foodpanda. The ordered food can be prepaid or paid against delivery. A pilot run will be conducted at the New Delhi railway station, post which Foodpanda’s services will be extended to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Chennai .
Currently, food is provided in more than 2,000 trains by online marketplace for food ordering and delivery, Delhi-based TravelKhana. Food was also provided by Hellocurry.com.
CEO of Foodpanda, Saurabh Kocchar states, “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.”
According to Rohit Kalita, Catering Services Director at IRCTC, the objective of the association with Foodpanda was to offer a wider food choice to the traveler. “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.”
Foodpanda has had a rough couple of months in the Indian market after Mint published an expose highlighting the mismanagement in the company. It was also sued in Delhi over miscalculations of service tax in its bills.