Long distance travel by trains are always fun, loaded with experiences and expose one to so many cultures, picturesque landscapes and people from various backgrounds that make up the very fabric of India. While all of this may be thrilling, for a foodie, train journeys may not be as much fun. One is obliged to carry food packed from home or rely on the food dispensed by the train’s pantry service. While the former can be reliable, the latter not so much and leaves a lot to be desired. Increasing Rail Budgets have never dealt with improving the quality of food served on trains.
Rail Rider, a fledgling startup is disrupting the in-train dining space. A little more than a year since launching operations, the startup has served more than a 1000 thousand meals on trains. These meals have been sourced from local restaurants and franchise food outlets like Subway as per customer choice powered by web and app technology. Train travellers can now look forward to a third and more fun as well as reliable option for dining. Networked India speaks to founder Ashish Dhawan about the journey of Rail Rider since starting up and now becoming the ‘Food Panda’ or ‘Zomato’ of train dining, the challenges faced and how the Startup India initiative has enabled the growth of his company.
Networked India (NI): Tell us about the genesis and evolution of Rail Rider, the travel eatery.
Ashish Dhawan (AD): After I quit my last job which was at Wipro, I had taken over a Subway franchisee from a friend who was moving out. The idea of Rail Rider came to me when I was getting orders from train travellers for Subway. I was always looking out to innovate and solve some problem through technology which is what every aspiring entrepreneur does. And operating a Subway store was never my aspiration, but since this opportunity came along I took it and that’s where I got the idea from.
I then had to convince my father to invest some money in this venture and that took me some time since he was skeptical about it – I keep coming up with ideas all the time. My father also let me use a vacant residential property which I converted into a commercial space and it where we operate from now. We have a good team now. It was a struggle initially – perhaps if I was in Bangalore or Gurgaon I would have got fresher talent easily. Eventually though I succeeded in building a fabulous team here. We have an in-house technology team, in-house business development team as well as back office operations. It’s also proving to be economical to operate out of Kota than maybe a Gurgaon and I am also not facing high attrition rates like I might in other cities. Technology is the enabler, we can operate from anywhere – high speed internet, cloud-based servers are the basic necessities.
NI: What kind of response have you received from customer who have tried out Rail Rider’s service? What was the experience with these initial customers like? How does one go about ordering meals through Rail Rider?
AD: When I was thinking of this idea, many of friends and mentors said why not build up a system for delivering at home or delivering in the office. So I was thinking about whether I am solving an actual problem or not. But if Railrider is not there then good food is in no way available to the passengers. So this is where I realised that this is the actual problem I will be solving.
Recently one of our customers commented that this service was completely unexpected. He felt PM’s startup India was truly helping solve the common man’s problem through companies like us. So that was an encouraging response and made me feel like yes, now we are really doing something. Those who use our service are loving it, but yes there is a long way to go.
Customers can decide where they want their food. Once they download our app, our system/application will automatically find out journey details through SMS that you get from IRCTC. So accordingly it will create a travel plan for you. You can see your previous journeys on the app, you can see your upcoming journeys. When there is a journey coming up, the app will send suggestions through notifications that you can order food. It will show you all the stations on your route where we have our tie-ups, food options – veg, non-veg, continental, chinese, south indian, etc. So whatever food you like, whatever time you select, the respective restaurant will be up, menu will come up and you can then order your food. You can also choose to pay cash on delivery or online as well.
NI: Some of your food partners include big names like Subway, Sigri, Chawla’s and many more. How much of a challenge was it to get them on board to supply food to train travellers?
AD: When we started calling restaurants they were very dicey about getting on board especially the good ones were hard to convince. So ultimately we had to go with the ones who were not doing very well in the dining space with local customers. The first few months were really bad in terms of quality delivered but soon the restaurants and business partners started realising that this kind of service is coming up – by that time even IRCTC was putting up print articles about e-catering in trains. Mr. Suresh Prabhu had also mentioned in 2015 that they would be phasing out the pantry car concept very soon. The government wanted Startup India and privatisation to take over in the e-catering space which worked in our favour. We were able to get many good restaurants on board. So, yes government policies are helping us and we are trying to exploit them as much as possible.
NI: How do you manage the logistics from time of order to delivery of the food at a particular junction? Do you use any particular technology to make this service possible?
AD: We are facing some challenges in logistics. Currently our food preparation, packaging and delivering are 
handled by our restaurant partners. Although they are experts in delivering in the non-train segment, delivering on trains is new to them. So we are helping them through technology. We have developed a restaurant panel for each of our partner restaurants which they can access through web or through their android phones. Every order which comes to them can be checked on a real-time basis. They can check the order, modify the order, call the customer directly, call Railrider, they can chat with our customer care, update their menus, see their invoices. Once they accept the order, they will start getting notifications of trains – timings, delays, etc. – in which they have to deliver. Basically tracking the trains should not be their worry and so we manage this aspect for them.
NI: What other challenges do you face and how are you dealing with them?
AD: There a couple of problems to which we don’t have a solution. What we are doing hasn’t been done till now and it’s a trial process for us. Tracking the trains, collaborating with restaurants, training them to deliver in moving trains, because once a train has left it is very difficult to satisfy that customer at the next station or even give him a discount coupon for the next order. So we are trying to find solutions to the problems we are facing.
Other challenges include a very low click to order conversion. One of the reasons is because of customers travelling alone. Our service is very attractive to single travellers or customers travelling alone. At many of our stations we have minimum order value of Rs. 300 or 400 which is not attractive to a single traveller. A single traveller may at max order a standard thali worth Rs. 150 or 170 or he may go for a maharaja thali or combo meal for about Rs. 200. But given the minimum value order, he will not be able to place his order. So we have asked these restaurants to take these orders even if they below the minimum value but charge a delivery fee to compensate for the lower value order. This seems to be working.
Additionally we are working on a technological solution to solve this problem. The technology will find out if on a particular date or journey, the same restaurant has a taken an order below the minimum value. In such instances when a customer views this restaurant they will not be able to see the minimum value and can book as per their preference. So this is a type of automation we are trying to work on and it will definitely increase the number of orders we are getting.
Moreover, currently we are taking orders on the call center system, the reason being the internet network is very low, this is despite the fact we have designed our application to work on 2G internet. We have started getting order as an advance. Mostly people come to our website while they are travelling on the train. But this has started changing as we promote ourselves on social media. So as people book their train tickets they are choosing to book their meals as well.
NI: Give us some background on yourself.
AD: I am 37, and am an engineer from North Maharashtra University in Jalgaon and I have done my MBA from Welingkar Institute of Management. I have been working in the IT industry for approximately 8 years. I have been working for Tata Infotech, ITC infotech and Wipro, the last where I worked before I quit to be an entrepreneur. I was into SAP implementation and had good experience in this field so I had planned to start up my own SAP implementation and audit company. But it never took off. But without a salary it is not easy to survive in Gurgaon, so I decided to shift back to my home town in Kota, Rajasthan. That is where I operate from right now too.
NI: What is traction on the RailRider app like? How crucial is mobile technology to service oriented enterprises like yours and how does it improve the customer experience?
AD: It’s been more than a year we’ve been operating. We are serving at almost 160 stations in India and we have tied up with more than 300 restaurants. Currently our base figures include more than 100 orders per day. We see a fairly distributed order ratio – across various compartments and economic classes of people on trains.
Mobile technology has helped us a lot, on the customer front as well as on the restaurant front. Before a mobile application, our order processing time and effort was huge. When we grew from 50 orders per day to 100 orders per day, I had to increase my call center team by 2% proportionately. But, now with mobile technology, the entire order processing takes place online automatically. So now, instead of getting a confirmation call, the customer receives a mobile notification to confirm the order. Our mobile app automatically confirms if the customer’s PNR is confirmed. Customer’s meal orders are also automatically sent to the chosen restaurant, whereas previously we would call up the restaurant to pass on the order. This is essentially means that even if my orders go up from 100 to 1000 a day, I can still process them with the same team.
NI: What is the long term vision for Rail Rider?
AD: The long term vision is to change the buy meals on train journeys. We Indians have a very ‘chalta hai’ attitude and accepting of the status quo. We want to change this attitude as far as dining in trains is considered. So far the experience has been encouraging and we have been successful to some extent in this regard.
We are also working on a logistical model which is in pilot mode at a couple of stations and if its works out we will expand it to other stations. This includes emergency services like when people food at night they also request us to deliver medicines like paracetamol or disprin, or baby food or pampers and things like that. So we do accept these requests, but the service is not currently online and is taken by the customer service center.
Our service on eastern stations is still developing, however, north, west and central are very well connected. Our network in the south too has recently been strengthened. So the focus is in having well connected networks across the country and various zones.
IRCTC has also started their own services called ‘Food on Track’ for which there is also an app. They are trying to promote these services and trying to tie-up with some aggregators like us and work together. So might see some form of collaboration between IRCTC and Rail Rider in the future!
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