After partnering with SpiceJet to offer air tickets to passengers who were getting tickets on the wait list, IRCTC has now entered a advertising partnership with ride-sharing service BlaBlaCar. The partnership will enable BlaBlaCar to advertise its ridesharing services to IRCTC Website users looking to book tickets for their city-to-city journeys. This is especially useful for travellers who have wait-listed train tickets and are looking for last-minute travel solutions. The partnership, a first of its kind in India, illustrates the promising complementarities between established players and new “sharing economy” models.

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After SpiceJet, now IRCTC offers BlaBlaCar option as well for waitlisted passengers:

BlaBlaCar is an eco- friendly ridesharing community and not an on-demand commercial driving service. In BlaBlaCar the price per co-traveller is limited to a partial contribution towards the cost of the journey, and prohibits the car-owner from making a profit from the trip. The platform makes a per-passenger distance-based cost recommendation for every journey that is transparent. However, hopefully all the issues with the ridesharing service have been resolved.

IRCTC is a subsidiary of Indian Railways, and handles catering, tourism and online ticketing operations for railways. It is by far the largest eCommerce player in the travel space in India and gets over 20 lakh hits daily and sells over 5.5 lakh tickets every day.

Say bye bye to waitlisted tickets, BlaBlaCar is on IRCTC!

BlaBlacar service helps its users to connect with people travelling to the same city, thereby providing intra-city travel solution. The service allows users to choose co-travellers in a member community with declared identities and peer-to-peer ratings.

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“We are delighted to partner with IRCTC. Our partnership will allow Indians across the country looking for last-minute travel options and those with wait-listed tickets to travel through car ride sharing. In a country like India where demand is higher than existing public transport infrastructure, BlaBlaCar provides a much-needed alternative to people for their city-to-city travel needs,” Raghav Gupta, India Country Manager, BlaBlaCar said.

So say goodbye to waitlisted tickets and surge airline prices during the summer and get ready to welcome a whole new way to travel in India!