Hyderabad Pilots Digital Rail Parcel Service
The South Central Railway has launched a pilot for a new "Rail Parcel App" in the Hyderabad region. The mobile application enables door-to-door parcel booking, online payments, and provides end-to-end shipment visibility. The initiative is part of a broader effort to digitize traditional logistics workflows in India using mobile, cloud, and IoT technologies.
This pilot extends beyond Hyderabad, initially launching in seven key southern cities: Vijayawada, Guntur, Rajahmundry, Visakhapatnam, Bengaluru, and Chennai. The project was developed in a record time of four months by teams from the South Central Railway headquarters, in collaboration with finance and commercial departments. The underlying digital platform, named ROQIT, is provided by AION-Tech Solutions Limited. This technology layer is designed for interoperability with existing Indian Railways systems, including the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), ensuring compatibility with legacy infrastructure while enabling modern, digitized workflows. This initiative is part of a larger push by Indian Railways to modernize and increase efficiency. A new RailTech Policy was also recently introduced to engage startups and innovators, with priority areas including AI-based safety systems and smart parcel load devices. The goal is to support a national freight loading target of 3,000 million tonnes by 2030. In a parallel strategic move, the South Central Railway has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM Bangalore). IIM Bangalore will conduct a comprehensive study of the freight logistics market, including demand forecasting and competitiveness analysis, to inform the long-term strategy for increasing rail freight volumes. The selection of Hyderabad for this pilot aligns with the city's emergence as a major logistics and supply chain hub, with warehouse leasing growing 30% year-over-year in 2023. The state of Telangana is actively working on a roadmap to become a global logistics destination by 2047, focusing on digital integration, multi-modal infrastructure, and automation.
