Vande Bharat parcel trains to target e-commerce shipping

Railways designs new trains to capture a slice of the growing online commerce delivery market

- Subhash Narayan

The Indian Railways plans to run dedicated Vande Bharat ‘parcel trains’ on specific routes to capture a chunk of goods shipped by online marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart that frequently use road and air cargo for faster shipments, two people aware of the plan said.

The railways have begun designing freight trains on the lines of its Vande Bharat passenger express. The first prototype is expected to be ready sometime in the next financial year. After test runs along the Mumbai-Gujarat section of the railways, the new high-speed freight trains may be considered for induction into regular railway service, the first among the two persons quoted above said on the condition of anonymity.

The national transporter hopes that the service using the semi-fast trains will help it regain some of the non-bulk freight business that has moved to roadways over the decades. This will be a big shift as railways is largely focused on revenue-generating bulk category such as coal, steel, iron ore, food grains, cement, petroleum products and fertilizer, among others.