Nearly 30 million people live on wheels in a developing country like India and with around 32% of the trains don’t have pantry facilities to meets the basic needs of food and water of the travelling families and youths. Available food items are mostly cringe-worthy and inedible. This was a major challenge which generated the spark in the minds of a young, budding entrepreneur named Manish Chandra. He always dreamed of having delicious food in trains and wished the same for every Indian. This dream lead him to give birth to a start-up named “Railrestro” as a platform which can solve this issue and bring smiles to people who travel in trains.
Railrestro offers e-catering services in Indian Railways. It works on mutualism business model. Railrestro has a wider network of vendor tie-up with restaurants across India. Popular food outlets and restaurants have joined hands together to supply food in train. Railrestro serves as a medium to showcase their reach to Indian railway travelers. People traveling through train across India can order food via Railrestro website, App or on call. Travelers can chose from wider range of menu options available along the route they are traveling. Travelers need to enter their PNR details or train number information on the website/app. Our inbuilt mechanism fetches the detail of passenger in terms of NAP, stations falling en-route and the restaurants at which they can place their food orders while traveling in train. The minimum lead time to process the order is around 60 mins. Passengers can choose to pay either through secure payment gateway or opt for cash on delivery options. Orders are also accepted via call or via Railrestro app available for Android & iOS device users.
Railrestro is an authorized e-catering service partner of IRCTC, the Indian Railway ombudsman. Now orders processed at IRCTC e-catering portal are routed to Railrestro and other e-catering aggregators and are processed on PPP model.

Challenges:
The major challenge at the inception was vendor tie up. Finding the right food partners across the major stations was a major concern. The team had to travel to major destinations and arrange meetings with the prospects in this regard. Outlet owners seemed to be very speculative about this business model. But, later when the order flow started via us, they agreed for signing contract with us.
The risk underlying in this business model was the supply chain management and cash flows. Yet, the idea gained a steady pace and as the tie-ups poured in there was no looking back for the young entrepreneur.
Scale up:
Railrestro became an authorized ecatering partner of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). This fuelled the growth engine to larger extent and we saw a gain in trust from popular food vending brands that came in to join hands with us. Digital promotion gradually saw an increased reach and the model reached a breakeven within 9 months of its inception.
Railrestro moved forward further with expansion along the major routes all over India and has emerged as a brand when it comes to ordering food in train. The passion to serve people has made Manish reach the pinnacle in train food delivery ecosystem.

The whole idea behind the startup was kindled during a train journey which the co-founders were a part of. Manish and his wife Suman, who are travel enthusiasts, were traveling in train and they ordered food from pantry car. They had to remain hungry for a night due to poor food quality and through about the plight of other travelers who would be forced to face similar situations. They found some good food outlets just outside the railway stations who offered better food at nominal costs. They discussed the idea together and it all lead to establishment of e-catering company later named as Railrestro.

Eureka Moment:
Talking about the conception of the idea, Manish says “It almost seemed impossible to imagine hot, favorite food being served without facing much of hassle right at ones seat while travelling in train. That is it when I came up with a unique business model to form a link between popular food chains, restaurants with the trains and solve the problem pertaining in terms of food availability.” Adding further, he says, “We made our first pilot project by delivering meals between Patna- New Delhi trains. When we found it working, we pushed further on the tie ups with major restaurants across other routes.

At the time of inception, the start-up ran on no-profit and no-loss model for first three months. Gradually the website gained popularity and the company scaled up. Currently we have attained profitability through wider vendor networks.
Company gained traction when it partnered up with IRCTC and started processing 600 orders per day in just 9 months from the time of its inception. Railrestro now has a presence in over 400+ cities and across 375 stations.

• How does the product work?
Railrestro works as an online web portal where people traveling via Indian Railways can place their food orders while traveling in train. A passenger can order food either via website at www.railrestro.com or via Railrestro app for Android & iOS devices. The traveler can enter their PNR or train info at the user interface. Our internal system, fetches the data from IRCTC servers for passenger journey details and the stations where they can opt to place their orders. Passengers can place their order 60 mins before the up-coming station in their journey. They have the option to chose for cash on delivery or prepay while order food in train. The order is routed to vendor at the delivery station who in turn delivered the food items as opted by them on their seat. The vendor collects the amount in case of COD. Railrestro generates weekly invoices for each of the vendors in its network and charged on nominal commission basis for the outstanding balance amount.

Future plans:
Railrestro is in the process of mapping all the stations in the food radar through maximum number of vendor tie ups and process a complete day meal for maximum users. It is also planning to go for 24*7 food supply chain across Indian railways.