Help may be at hand for the harassed Mumbai suburban traveller, who often needs to leave home at daybreak to undertake a long commute to reach their workplace on time.
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The situation is particularly bad for single and young working-couples for whom there is none to pack a lunch-box. They often spend a lifetime on street-food. An online meal-booking platform, which has already begun connecting long-distance train travellers with restaurants along the Indian Railway’s network has drawn up plans to cover suburban travellers first in Mumbai and then Delhi.
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“ Yes. We plan to enter the suburban train travellers market. Our estimates have shown that Delhi and Mumbai are two large markets where many young couples and singles live and take long commutes to their workplace. They often leave early and have no facility of carrying home food. We will cater to them, so that they can walk into their office with a moderately priced breakfast or lunch in hand”, said Pushpinder Singh, CEO and Co founder of Travelkhana.com. Delivery will be made through a platform-kiosk.
While a pilot project has been completed for Delhi metro travellers, the Mumbai e-catering service may roll out by this year-end.
“These are two large markets of 1.2 crore people”, he said.
The three-and-a-half year old online food catering company’s effort to penetrate the vast market of train travellers received a fillip through the Indian Railways policy to provide food options to train travellers.
Over three billion meals are consumed by long-distance travellers annually. Hitherto, they either carried home-cooked meals or consumed the food offered by the pantry cars.
This changed when a few months back, IRCTC tied up with some food aggregators to offer food options making it possible for train travellers to have food of their choice on-the-go.
sThis meant that one could now have, say K C Das sweets while either passing through or starting a journey from Bengaluru.
Travelkhana tracks trains to ensure that meals are delivered at the right time, right seat and in a fresh ready-to-eat form. “This is the future .. , while pantry cars will remain on select trains, food ordering through such platforms will become the norm and gradually all stations will be covered” a senior official of IRCTC said.
Currently, around 150 cities are covered under this initiative. This will soon expand to 220 stations covering all mail and express trains, it was learnt.
Travelkhana tracks trains to ensure that meals are delivered at the right time and the right seat