Indian Railways has been offering discounts to make freight services more attractive and has taken several steps to increase revenue

Indian Railways is aiming to make its services the preferred mode of transport by taking the modal share of the freight business to 40 percent.

“We are trying to create a new railways…to make railways the preferred mode of transport and take the modal share to more than 35% or up to 40%. Bring down logistics cost of a company as a whole," Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal was quoted as saying in a LiveMint report.

Speaking at a virtual industry event organized by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Goyal pointed out that even after a stringent lockdown due to Covid-19, freight loading had gradually increased. He said that in the first six days of September, freight loading was 19.19 million tonnes (MT), up 10.41 percent on-year, according to the report.

The freight business currently comprises 33 percent of the Railways' overall operations. Indian Railways has been offering discounts to make freight services more attractive and has taken several measures to increase its freight revenue.

Besides, it is also working on its marketing plan and setting up business development units across different railway zones so that they are able to connect with concerned stakeholders, said the report.

“Now instead of customer coming to railways, we have business development units in every division reaching out to customers. People are telling me it’s a shock when we get a call from the railways…otherwise earlier people had to approach Railways and plead for a rake," Goyal was quoted in the report.

He called it a change in culture in railways helping them in partnering with private companies, as per the report.