SCR woos e-commerce giants to utilise parcel services

Holds talks with Flipkart for transporting goods; Amazon, Myntra to follow suit

Hyderabad: A surge in online shopping, coupled with the vast connectivity of the Indian Railways, is opening up new avenues for business for the South Central Railway, who is now planning big to transport consignments from major ecommerce players like Flipkart and Amazon.

While Flipkart has already held talks with SCR officials regarding the feasibility and advantages of transporting their consignments by train and are very likely to start sending their goods via train soon, SCR officials are expecting Amazon and Myntra to opt for railways to send their consignments soon.

Since Hyderabad is witnessing a spurt in online shopping, e-commerce giants are chalking out plans to transport consignments in quick and safe modes, officials said. The consignments will be transported on SCR’s special parcel trains with the Railways offering tariff concessions to freight customers. Given the connectivity advantages provided by the railways in terms of being well connected with urban areas as well as rural areas, transportation of parcels by railways becomes quick, convenient and beneficial for e-commerce platforms.

“Advance booking of parcel space is available in parcel vans attached to passenger trains and time-tabled parcel special trains which are being run connecting Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Nizamabad, Vishakhapatnam, New Delhi and Howrah have been attracting freight customers,” a senior official said. The advance booking process for parcel vans is similar to booking of reservation berths where the customer can schedule the transportation according to their convenience. Parcel space is also expandable by attaching additional parcel vans if there is any demand. The new initiatives for the promotion of e-commerce and expansion of parcel services will benefit the railways in long run, officials said.

Freight loading

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, policy initiatives like tariff and non-tariff concessions saw the freight loading of the zone in September surpass the freight loading during the same period last year. The zone recorded an overall loading of 7.56 million tonnes (MT) during September compared to an overall loading of 7.51 MT recorded during the same period in 2019. The policy initiatives for the cement sector like relaxations in the mini rake loading, tariff concession for long-lead traffic and relaxing train load benefits norms among others contributed to the cement loading which was increased to 2.2 MT in September compared to 1.7 MT last year.

Similar growth trends were also witnessed in loading of food grains, fertilisers, raw material, petroleum products, containers and other commodities. Continuous monitoring of the freight train movements along with the large-scale track maintenance works have also contributed towards increase in freight loading, officials said.

On right track

• Railways launched advance booking of parcel vans, similar to reservation berths
• September month freight loading surpassed last year record by loading 7.56 MT
• Average speed of the freight trains rose from 26 kmph in 2019 to 51 kmph in 2020
• SCR records third best average speed of freight trains across Indian Railways

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