Adani buys 30% in Trainman for Rs 3.5 cr

NEW DELHI: Adani Enterprises, the flagship firm of billionaire Gautam Adani's group, has bought a close to 30 per cent stake in Start Enterprises Pvt Ltd, which owns the online train ticket booking platform Trainman.

Adani Enterprises last month announced that it has signed a pact to acquire 100 per cent of SEPL.

In a stock exchange filing on Saturday, Adani Enterprises said Adani Digital Labs Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, has bought a 29.81 per cent stake in SEPL for Rs 3.56 crore.

SEPL had a turnover of Rs 4.51 crore in 2022-23 (April 2022 to March 2023) fiscal year.

While last month, Adani Enterprises had described SEPL as ''an online train booking and information platform,'' on Saturday it described the firm as one into ''e-commerce and website development.'' The announcement last month had led to a mini-controversy with Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh seeking to suggest that Adani's takeover of Trainman may eventually result in the takeover of IRCTC - the Indian Railways' ticketing and other services arm.

IRCTC had issued a statement to deny the allegation. Explaining the e-ticketing business segment, IRCTC had said that around 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked on a daily basis in Indian Railways. Out of these almost 81 per cent are e-tickets and booked through IRCTC itself. Hence, there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents, including Trainman.

Trainman, being a B2C partner of IRCTC contributes 0.13 per cent of total reserved ticketing, it had said adding since these firms are integrated with IRCTC, overall, they help the customers in a smooth ticketing process.

Founded in 2011 by Vineet Chirania and Karan Kumar, Trainman is an Indian travel booking app that enables passengers to check the PNR (Passenger Name Record) status, predicts the possibility of getting a confirmed seat in case of a wait-list, and also provides real-time updates on seat availability, running status, time table, coach position, fare calculator, etc.

Trainman is Adani group's second investment in the travel booking and information segment. In October 2021, Adani Enterprises bought a minority stake in Flipkart's Cleartrip Pvt Ltd, an online travel aggregator.