In its endeavour to boost freight revenues, the Indian Railway is mulling an innovative model that will also provide a time bound delivery of the material or commodity.
Sources told Zee Media that Railways may adopt the Domino’s Pizza delivery model to boost freight revenues, which means that the national transporter will ensure time bound delivery of the products and goods and in case there is delay, the Railways will pay adequate compensation for it.
The compensation model will be on hourly basis, which means that Railways will provide a fixed time frame for delivery of commodities, failing which, it will compensate the customers on delay of every hours. For example goods from Mumbai needs to be delivered to Delhi that will take a maximum of 3 days (72 hours). However, if the goods are not delivered within those 72 hours, the Railways will pay compensation for every delayed hour after the expiry of the set deadline.
Railways plans to implement the model on limited sector and gradually take it forward after the completion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor by 2021.
Sources further told Zee Media that Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has asked the his team to take the idea forward, which in long run will benefit the national transporter in terms of revenue generation.
The move is aimed to attract steel, coal, iron ore, cement companies to select railways for their preferred mode of transportation. Railways also eyes to attract e-Commerce companies, Auto Sector and Pharma Sector for its freight delivery model.
Indian Railways has expanded its basket of freight that is used by it to move goods from from one location of country to another. In a first, Pepsi bottles were transported in 5 parcel vans from Azara Station in Assam to Naharlagun in Arunachal Pradesh on August 15.
In order to attract more companies to choose Indian Railways as the means of transportation to move the commodities in country, Indian Railways has announced a series of benefits, ranging from lenient freight rates to even promise of freight delivery in a fixed time frame.