Prepared By : Animesh Bose Abhishek Das Gyanaranjan Sahoo Kousik Ghosh Animesh KotaL

E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. In practice, this term and a newer term, e-business, are often used interchangeably. For online retail selling, the term e-tailing is sometimes used.

1. Business-to-Consumer(B2C) : It applies to any business or organization that sells its products or services to consumers over the Internet for their own use. In other words, it provides a direct sale between the supplier and in the individual consumer. 2. Business-to-Business (B2B) : Business-toBusiness involves online transactions between businesses . Examples of B2B include online companies that specialise in marketing strategies, advertising, email companies, internet consultants, website development etc.

3. Consumer-to-Consumer or Peer-to-Peer (C2C/P2P) : Consumer-to-Consumer or Peerto-Peer is defined as exchanges between/among consumers. These exchanges can involve a third-party involvement, which can facilitate and provide the infrastructure, place and governance for the transactions/exchanges 4. Consumer-to-Business (C2B) : Consumerto-Business is when consumers present themselves as a buyer group.

In India online ticketing has been the most successful force in online E-commerce industry. This also supplemented by the fact that today online travel industry constitutes 78% of the total E-commerce industry in India. Online ticketing has always been the entry point for first time E-commerce users thus making more payment avenues available through association with commercial banks may help in getting more traction.

Its estimated gross annual sales of Rs.3400 crore constitutes 1/3rd of the total ecommerce industry worth Rs.9000 crores in India. It owns one of the largest agent networks for selling travel products in India by way of their various initiatives like cyber cafe chains, authorized distributors Its tickets are also being sold in association with other travel portals like yatra, clear trip etc.

IRCTC currently levies additional charges for itickets which ranges from rs.40 to rs.60 and for e-tickets it ranges from Rs.10 to Rs.40. The charges, if these charges are reduced or abolished it could increase penetration and induce more people into E-commerce. The service is mostly used by agents who charge additional commission apart from charges levied by IRCTC from their customers this again limits the penetration level and if the users are given more payment avenues it could propel many to go for direct transactions

A new railway ticketing portal is being launched by the Indian Railways, which will be run by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT arm of Indian Railways. The service charge for booking of tickets through this portal would be cheaper at Rs 10 for AC classes and Rs 5 for others, which is half the half of the existing service charge levied by the IRCTC reservation portal, at Rs 20 for AC and Rs 10 for others.

Go India Smart Card: The minister announced the introduction of a pan-India, multi-purpose Go-India smart card on a pilot basis, a single window package for passengers to seamlessly pay for tickets for long distance, suburban, and metro journeys Real Time Train Information System: The railways has also tied up with IIT Kanpur and RDSO to deploy a Real Time Train Information System, in addition to implement e-procurement and e-auctions for greater transparency, development of a web-based databank for land and asset management database and issuing paperless railway receipts and the extension of web based system of allotment of iron ore rakes to coal traffic.

Indian Railways Catering And Tourism Development Corporation (IRCTC), Asias largest e-Commerce Website and ICICI Bank, Indias second largest bank, today announced the launch of Railway Ticket Booking via SMS facility which allows IRCTC customers to book railway tickets via SMS and make payments through their ICICI Bank accounts.

Indian railways Provides us the Tickets booking portal like IRCTC(Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation), the largest and the fastest growing e-commerce website in the Asia-Pacific region which helps in making E-Tickets, I-tickets, Cancellation of Tickets, Accommodation Availability and other services . Other Portals like www.erail.in helps us to search in more managed way of searching the availability of tickets

E-commerce has shown a revolutionary in the field of Indian Railways by launching search portals like IRCTC, which helps not only the customer but also the Indian railways to have better and managed way for booking the railway tickets, And also to manage the catering and hospitality services at stations, on trains and other locations and to promote domestic and international tourism through development of budget hotels, special tour packages, information & commercial publicity and global reservation systems