Indian Railways has decided to turn all signages on platforms and FOBs of 2,000 A-D class stations into only digital ones and plans to tap the largely unexplored advertising opportunities along the railway tracks. In a policy document released on January 10, the Railways also talks about a number of game changing features like extended rights tenure, right of first refusal, large packages with merging zones (than the prevailing division-based approach) , monthly advance pay systems and many more, some of which have already been adopted or are soon to be adopted by IR.

Taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the Vikas Shivir in November 2016, Ranjan Thakur, Director – Non-Fare Revenue, Indian Railways, said, “Hon’ble Minister of Railways and we have already spoken about how IR carries the most massive captive eyeballs on a day-to-day basis. The new policy will contribute to optimising non-fare revenues further with a strong focus on OOH advertising. What we are going to adopt is a right-based approach as compared to our earlier site-based approach. Rather than we intervening, buyers can themselves suggest to us sites along the tracks anywhere in India and we are ready to sell them subject to they are becoming safety hazards.”

Giving the much-needed boost to digital OOH, Indian Railways will go for only digital signages in 2,000 stations under A to D categories. “These stations, within a year’s time will have no static site within the stations, and on platforms or FOBs, whereas other than these areas, there will be static sites,” Thakur mentioned.