Adani Enterprises, the main company of Gautam Adani’s business conglomerate, has acquired approximately 30 percent ownership in Start Enterprises Pvt Ltd (SEPL), the parent company of Trainman, an online platform for booking train tickets. Adani Enterprises had previously disclosed its intention to purchase the entire stake in SEPL.
According to a filing with the stock exchange on Saturday, Adani Enterprises stated that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Adani Digital Labs Pvt Ltd, has purchased a 29.81 percent stake in SEPL for a sum of ₹3.56 crore.SEPL had a turnover of ₹4.51 crore in 2022-23 (April 2022 to March 2023) fiscal year.
In the previous month, Adani Enterprises referred to SEPL as an “online train booking and information platform.” However, in the recent announcement on Saturday, the company now describes SEPL as being involved in “e-commerce and website development.”
This change in description sparked a minor controversy, with Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh suggesting that Adani’s acquisition of Trainman could potentially lead to the takeover of IRCTC, the ticketing and services division of Indian Railways.
IRCTC released a statement refuting the allegation and provided an explanation regarding its e-ticketing business segment. According to IRCTC, approximately 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked daily within the Indian Railways system. Out of these, nearly 81 percent of the bookings are e-tickets processed directly through IRCTC. As a result, there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents, including Trainman.
IRCTC clarified that Trainman, as a business-to-consumer (B2C) partner of IRCTC, contributes only 0.13 percent of the total reserved ticketing. The statement emphasized that since these partner firms are integrated with IRCTC, their collective efforts contribute to a smoother ticketing process for customers.
Trainman, established in 2011 by Vineet Chirania and Karan Kumar, is an Indian travel booking application that offers various services to passengers. These services include checking the PNR (Passenger Name Record) status, predicting the likelihood of obtaining a confirmed seat for wait-listed bookings, and providing real-time updates on seat availability, train running status, timetable, coach position, fare calculation, and more.
Adani Group’s investment in Trainman marks its second venture into the travel booking and information sector. Previously, in October 2021, Adani Enterprises acquired a minority stake in Cleartrip Pvt Ltd, an online travel aggregator owned by Flipkart.