Over the next couple of months, India’s premiere Rajdhani Express will not be sporting its trademark red colour.
Similarly,
the vibrant blue of other trains will be replaced by ad-wrappings,
which the ministry of railway has planned in a bid to boost revenue for
the cash-strapped transporter.
Tapping
its vast unused advertisement potential, the Railways has decided to
allow adverts to be posted on the outside of over ten thousand trains.
The move is worth an estimated Rs 11,000 crore for Indian Railways.
To begin with, vinyl wrapping will be done on nearly two dozen trains. Tenders for this have been invited, said officials.
The
minimum reserve price for buying advertisement rights on the outside
of a train will vary between Rs 1.2 crore to Rs 6 crore.
Initially, Indian Railways is offering selected Rajdhani trains originating in Delhi for vinyl wrapping.
The
Mumbai Rajdhani and August Kranti Rajdhani Express, Mumbai–Ahmedabad
Shatabdi Express, Maharashtra Sampark Kranti Express, and Golden Temple
Mail are some of the other trains selected by railways in the first
phase
Next in line will be Shatabdi Express trains running on Northern Railways.
Ad-wrapping
of trains is one of the suggestions made by the Railways' engineering
firm RITES, which said that Indian Railways has the potential to earn Rs
11,000 crore from advertisement.
Soon
after taking charge, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu had asked RITES to
do the first-ever professional assessment of how much money the Railways
could earn from selling ad-space.
The idea is that the Railways' income
should not be solely dependent on freight and passenger fares.
The
Railways has huge potential to use its space for advertising as it runs
13,000 trains per day on 63,000 kilometres of track, and carries 23
million passengers – equivalent to the population of Australia.
However, the Railways has been recording a revenue deficit of over Rs 32,000 in recent years.
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