Manish Chandra was a much worried man last year, wondering how consumer behaviour of rail passengers would change because of the pandemic. The 30-year-old Patna-based entrepreneur had started an e-catering service for train passengers in 2015 called RailRestro, which went on to serve over 60 lakh meals up until March 2020.
His company became an authorised e-catering service partner of IRCTC in 2017 and is currently their biggest food aggregator available through an app, website and a call. Through its network of vendors and partnerships with restaurants within 5km radius of selected stations, Chandra has built a Swiggy-Zomato like food delivery model for train passengers craving food beyond chai, samosas and bread pakoras on railway platforms.
With almost a year of no work, Chandra as co-founder and director of RailRestro, is back in business even though half the trains are not even fully on track. And he is pleasantly surprised at the much greater interest in RailRestro after what seemed like a long, hard road to recovery.
"During lockdown, people had stopped ordering outside food. We were worried they would hardly be interested in ordering food on the go. But believe me, in the last few days that we started working again, we have seen a three-fold rise in traffic to our website. People are searching us a lot more. In fact more than they did even during Holi and Diwali weekends which we consider a peak time for us when people travel home," says Chandra on the phone from Patna.
"Before COVID-19, I was serving 5,000 to 6,000 meals a day. But looking at the interest now, I am pretty sure I will be selling 10,000 to 20,000 meals by April," says Chandra whose five-year-old company is on an expansion spree, looking out for more vendor and restaurant tie-ups, ensuring more diversity in cuisines, adding more stations and stops and enlarging his delivery fleet.
Coming from a business family with interests in food processing, Chandra first decided to carve an independent path as a commercial pilot after school. But he dropped out of flying lessons to come back to terra firma and join his family business. After he got married, his partner Suman Priya, a software engineer by training, suggested the idea of a food delivery system while travelling on trains, unhappy as they both were with the quality of food already available there. Chandra combined his business acumen with Priya's technical knowhow to create RailRestro as co-founders. All passengers need to do is key in their PNR details on their platform at least 45 minutes prior to when they want their food orders to come, so the company can track train timings, routes and halts and alert their vendors for hot and fresh meals.
"Yes sometimes the delivery doesn't reach on time, especially after 10 in the night. We don't accept orders after 10:30pm. There might be network connectivity problems on apps. But we are working on fixing those issues," says Chandra who has his own delivery staff at 15 stations but wants to cover 100 more stations with company delivery staff this year.
RailRestro services are active in 220 stations across India, but Chandra hopes to have 600 stations under his belt. "I want people to be able to order food from RailRestro after a stop of every 30 minutes," says Chandra. He is currently working with 2,100-plus vendors.
While stations from where trains begin their journey do not elicit many orders, it's the busy in-between stops where the maximum food orders originate. Vijayawada, Vizag, Gwalior are the busiest stations for RailRestro with more than half the passengers ordering 'thalis'.
But Chandra wants to make sure no passenger craving south Indian food in a north Indian station is disappointed.
"I got so caught up with operations I never had time to reach out for funding. I started making good profits in the bootstrap stage itself. Investors themselves have reached out with pitches for funding and collaboration. Maybe I will seek out funding this year," says a now-unconcerned Chandra.
