New Delhi:In a bid to generate more non-fare revenue, Indian Railways will offer Content on Demand (CoD) giving rail passengers a range of movies and shows to view soon in all premium/express/Mail trains and suburban trains.
The Railway Board had entrusted RailTel, a miniratna PSU under Ministry of Railways, to provide the Content on Demand service to passengers in trains aimed at generating more non-fare revenue. RailTel has selected M/s Margo Network, a subsidiary of Zee Entertainment, as the Digital Entertainment Service Provider (DESP) for providing Content on Demand (CoD) Service on trains and railway stations.
The project will be implemented in two years and the provision of content such as movies, shows, educational programmes will be made available both in paid and unpaid formats for a contract period of 10 years which includes first two years of implementation.
In this project, RailTel will provide various pre-loaded multilingual content consisting of movies, music videos, general entertainment and lifestyle in moving trains through media servers installed in trains.
An official release here said the CoD platform will also provide e-commerce/m-commerce services in various domains -- travel bookings (cab, bus, train) and provide various innovative solutions in digital marketing domain. With CoD, passengers will be able to enjoy uninterrupted free/subscription-based entertainment service and high quality buffer free streaming across personal devices during their train journey. The content will be periodically refreshed.
RailTel CMD Puneet Chawla told reporters that the full rollout will be completed by 2022.
The service will not only improve overall passenger experience but at the same time will increase the non-fare revenue through multiple monetisation models. The scope covers all 17 Zones of Indian Railways. The earning from the project will be majorly through three streams -- advertisement-based monetisation, subscription-based monetisation and e-commerce/partnership services.
A total of approximately 8,731 trains which includes 3,003 trains (premium/mail/express- to and fro) pan India and 2,864 pairs of suburban trains (total 5,728 trains) have been kept in the scope of the service rollout. Also CoD will be available at all Wi-Fi enabled railway stations which has crossed 5,563 Railway stations as on date.(UNI)
