Uber Adds Train Ticket Booking To Its App In India Through ixigo Partnership

Ride-hailing company Uber announced on Tuesday the launch of a train ticket booking service within its mobile app in India, built in partnership with travel platform ixigo. The new feature lets riders book train tickets, check their passenger name record status, and connect their first- and last-mile journeys, all without leaving the Uber app.

What The Partnership Offers

Under the arrangement, ixigo supplies the underlying train booking technology and handles the post-booking customer experience, while Uber integrates that functionality directly into its existing app alongside its mobility services. Arnab Kumar, director of business development at Uber India and South Asia, said train journeys are central to how people in the country travel, noting that a passenger's journey typically begins well before they board a train and continues long after they reach their destination. The company frames the move as an extension of its existing presence at railway stations across India, where it already operates dedicated pick-up and drop-off zones for riders connecting to and from train travel.

Aloke Bajpai, ixigo's group chief executive, and Rajnish Kumar, the company's group co-chief executive, said the partnership builds on years of work to make rail travel simpler and less stressful, including investments in post-booking support and features designed to give travellers more confidence throughout their journey. By linking up with Uber, the companies said they aim to extend that experience beyond the train itself, covering the full journey from a traveller's doorstep to their final destination.

Why It Matters For India's Travel Market

India's rail network remains one of the most heavily used transportation systems in the world. Indian Railways carried more than 7.4 billion passengers in the 2025-26 financial year, according to figures cited by the companies, underscoring the scale of the addressable market for any service built around train travel. Online train ticketing has been growing steadily as more travellers shift away from counter bookings toward app-based platforms, and the tie-up gives Uber a way to capture a larger share of that shift without having to build train booking infrastructure from scratch.

For Uber, the launch adds train tickets to what is already a fairly broad mobility portfolio in India, spanning two-wheeler rides, autos, cars, metro ticketing, and both intercity cars and buses. Layering train bookings on top positions the company to compete more directly for a bigger slice of a traveller's overall journey, rather than just the first- and last-mile legs it has traditionally served. For ixigo, the deal offers a significant new distribution channel, tapping into Uber's large existing user base without needing to build its own ride-hailing network.

The Bigger Picture

The partnership is part of a broader pattern of consolidation and cross-platform integration in India's travel and mobility sector, where companies increasingly look to bundle adjacent services rather than compete purely on their core offering. As more Indian consumers rely on their phones to plan entire journeys end-to-end, tie-ups of this kind are likely to become more common, with mobility and travel platforms racing to become the single app travellers turn to for booking, tracking, and completing multi-leg trips.

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