Cleartrip ties up with IRCTC to offer train tickets

Online travel agency Cleartrip.com has signed a partnership with IRCTC to introduce online train bookings

The sheer size and scale of the Indian Railways, made offering online railway bookings a high priority for Cleartrip.
The Government-owned Indian Railways is one of the largest and most trafficked railroad networks in the world—over 18,000 trains operate daily, plying across over 60,000 kilometres of railroad tracks and over 6,800 railway stations.

Cleartrip, which had launched a search-only service in February this year, added maps for stations and train routes, dateless searches to enable checking of railway schedules, connecting journeys where no direct train is available between stations. Registered users can even save their train searches, letting them conduct their regular searches again without having to re-enter information.

According to the agency, instead of having to check aspects of the booking separately, a single search provides users with train fares, schedules and availability simultaneously.

"The amount of data on railways is vast and we wanted a system that kept things simple, while delivering search results in under a second, and we've reinvented the wheel to create that system," said Hrush Bhatt, founder and director, Product and Strategy, Cleartrip.

A wide variety of payment options are available including credit cards, debit cards and net-banking.