Indian Railways Opens Door-to-Door Parcel Booking in Eight Cities

Indian Railways will launch a door-to-door parcel service across eight cities, letting customers book doorstep pickup and delivery through the Rail Parcel App — branded “Ghar se Ghar Tak” — after a pilot run. The service covers Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune.

The structure is a genuine shift in the railways’ commercial model. Rather than asking customers to bring consignments to a parcel office, the national carrier will hand the first and last mile to private logistics partners while retaining the trunk haul between stations. For third-party logistics providers, it is a new distribution channel. For shippers, it is a third option between road and air for time-sensitive, low-volume cargo.

The app functions as a digital marketplace. Customers book consignments, select a logistics provider and pay online, avoiding a trip to railway premises and the conventional paperwork at parcel offices.

Because the platform aggregates multiple logistics providers, the service effectively creates an asset-light network for the railways — parcel volumes fill spare capacity on existing trains without the carrier having to build a collection and delivery fleet of its own.

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