Competition on ‘How to raise money for Railways to provide better Services (Jan Bhagidari)

Indian Railways have decided to conduct a public competition on ‘How to raise money for Railways to provide better Services (Jan Bhagidari)’.

Indian Railways occupies a unique position in the socio-economic map of the country. Energy efficient, economical in land use and with a high degree of operating efficiency, the railways are considered a vehicle of growth contributing to rapid industrial and infrastructural development of the country. However, in the process, Railways tend to subsidize and nourish the economy by incurring a social cost, much beyond the normal call of any transport system. This constrains our ability to spend generously on enhancing the customer-experience and hence, we would like to invite the general public, industries, academia, research institutions, chambers of commerce, Zonal Railways/PUs and other units of Railways to come up with ideas on HOW TO RAISE MONEY FOR BETTER SERVICES.


The Challenge is designed as an online competition hosted at innovate.mygov.in providing submission of original innovative solutions for ‘How to raise money for Railways to provide better Services (Jan Bhagidari)’. The solution should include the idea, detail business plan, implementation strategies for raising of money. The participants may particularly look at opportunities of easy implementability in the current system of Indian Railways.

The Challenge aims to encourage creation of intuitive, easy to use Idea/Business plan and solution that can enable convenient implementation without impacting the current capability of Indian Railway.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
1. Key Objective:
Development of an Idea, business plan and implementation strategy for ‘How to raise money for Railways to provide better Services (Jan Bhagidari)’

2. Boundary dimension:

• The solutions should restrict themselves to areas pertaining to transportation business – passengers, freight, parcels and Non-Fare sources etc.
• Solution for raising revenue should steer clear of suggesting expansion of infrastructure such as construction of new lines, stations, etc.
• Solutions for raising revenue should steer clear of suggesting substantial Public Investment.
• The solution should steer clear of changes in Organizational structure, generalizations.
• The solution should steer clear of suggesting ways and means of raising money from public lending agencies/private investors/stock exchanges.

3. Raising money in Indian Railway:

The provisional figures of revenue for 2016-17 and trends of revenue for 2017-18 are showing stagnation in Gross Revenue. It is evident from these figures that Revenues of Indian Railways are not growing commensurate with the increasing demand for transportation services. The main sources of Revenue for Railways are Freight, Passenger Services including Suburban and Kolkata Metro, Parcels etc. These sources are showing signs of stagnation. The challenge before the Railways is to increase its revenue to provide better services.

Normally, Revenue can be increased in one of the following ways:

Increase the range / quantum of services
Increase rate of recovery per unit of transportation
Plug leakages of revenue
4. Broad Expectations from the Solution:
The Solution/ Idea may consider, among other things:

Scalability to organisation level
Financial and commercial feasibility
Transparency
Customer friendly
Sustainability
Scope for further improvement
Compatibility with national economic requirements

Eligibility
The Challenge is open to individuals and companies/ institutions.
In case of companies, majority of team members/ shareholders are required to be Indian resident nationals.
All participating individuals are required to be Indian resident nationals.
Participants (Individual/ or in case of teams, the team leader) are required to be at least 18 years of age as on 20th March 2018.
The following persons and their immediate relatives cannot participate in the Challenge:
An employee of Indian Railways directly involved in execution and evaluation of the Challenge.
Any member or employee of Knowledge cum execution partner / Organizer.
Any member of the Evaluation panel, Experts and Jury for the Challenge.

Awards: Total Four prizes
First Prize: Rs. 10 Lacs ( Ten Lacs only ) Maximum
Second Prize: Rs. 5 Lacs ( Five Lacs only ) Maximum
Third Prize: Rs. 3 Lacs ( Three Lacs only ) Maximum
Fourth Prize: Rs. 1 Lacs ( One Lac only ) Maximum

Last date of Submitting Entries
Entries duly completed and fully filled must be submitted using the online application system before 6pm IST on 19th May 2018.

For further information click here