Recently, Indian multinational which is also part of the Adani group, Adani Enterprises has acquired a nearly 30 percent stake in Start Enterprises Pvt Ltd (SEPL).
Adani Enterprises Acquiring Stake In SEPL
SEPL is also the owner of Trainman, an online platform for train ticket bookings.
The news of this acquisition was announced by Adani Enterprises last month further stating their intention to acquire 100 percent of SEPL.
Adani Enterprises disclosed that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Adani Digital Labs Pvt Ltd, has purchased a 29.81 per cent stake in SEPL for Rs 3.56 crore, in a filing with the stock exchange on Saturday.
In the meantime, SEPL reported a turnover of Rs 4.51 crore in the fiscal year 2022-23 (April 2022 to March 2023).
What To Expect In The Future?
Trainman was founded in 2011 by Vineet Chirania and Karan Kumar.
It is an Indian train travel booking app that allows passengers to check their PNR (Passenger Name Record) status, predicts the likelihood of getting a confirmed seat from a waitlist, and provides real-time updates on seat availability, train status, timetable, coach position, fare calculation, and more.
Basically, this investment in Trainman marks the Adani Group’s second foray into the travel booking and information segment.
Prior to this, Adani Enterprises acquired a minority stake in Cleartrip Pvt Ltd, an online travel aggregator owned by Flipkart during October 2021.
As per the initial description of SEPL by Adani Enterprises, Trainman is an “online train booking and information platform”, the company now describes it as an entity involved in “e-commerce and website development”.
Although, this change in description caused some controversy last month when Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh suggested that Adani’s acquisition of Trainman could potentially lead to a takeover of IRCTC, the Indian Railways’ ticketing and service arm.
But later on, IRCTC issued a statement denying the allegation, explaining that around 14.5 lakh reserved tickets are booked daily in Indian Railways, with approximately 81 per cent being e-tickets processed through IRCTC itself.
Further explaining that as a business-to-consumer (B2C) partner of IRCTC, Trainman contributes only 0.13 per cent of the total reserved ticketing.
So, in simple words, there is no competition between IRCTC and its agents, including Trainman, as they are integrated with IRCTC’s platform, ultimately benefiting customers by providing a seamless ticketing process, IRCTC emphasized.
