Initiating a large-scale significant exercise to identify and leverage pan-India advertising opportunities at railway stations and trains, the Indian Railways has tied up with multinational Ernst and Young as consultant to undertake the job of raising funds for railways infrastructure development.
EY is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in london, United Kingdom and is a global leader in its Assurance, Tax, Transaction and Advisory services. The organization operates as a network of member firms which are separate legal entities in individual countries. The Railway PSU — RITES, the consulting wing for Indian Railways, awarded the mandate to EY following a multi-party bid.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu is emphasizing on increasing revenues through non-fare box route especially through advertising and initial estimates have indicated an advertising potential on Railways in excess of Rs5,000 crore over the next few years.
EY has been assigned the job for tapping the advertising potential of the Indian Railways assets, including fleet of trains spread in a wide network of about 7,000 railway stations across India. “This is the first time in the country that a large-scale project to identify and leverage pan-India advertising opportunities has been initiated,” Farokh Balsara, Partner and National leader — Media and Entertainment, EY India, said.
“A unique aspect of this exercise will be the creation of a neutral assessment on the return of investments by advertisers in this medium. In the case of railway assets, they will remain comforted as eyeballs, quantity of time spent and segmentation of viewers is highly quantifiable as the Railways maintains ticketing and station footfall data as part of their database,” said a railway official.