Prabhu bets on innovation

Analytics team to optimise investment decisions; 50-cr grant offered

New Delhi, Feb 25: Indian Railways has set up a new team to use analytics for optimising investment decisions and earmarked a sum of `50 crore to offer grants to employees and startups for supporting innovation as part of this year's Budget.

Announcing the Railway Budget for 201617 in Parliament on Thursday, Union minister Suresh Prabhu said a dedicated, cross functional team called Special Unit for Transportation Research and Analytics (SUTRA) would be set up for carrying out detailed analytics leading to optimised investment decisions and operations. “This team would comprise of professional analysts and best-inclass decision support systems and optimisation engines,” he said.

As an organisation, Railways collects over 100 terabytes of data every year, yet it is hardly analysed to gain business insights. A sum of `50 crore has been set aside for providing innovation grants to employees, startups and small businesses to support internal and external innovation.

“On an annual basis we will seek out solutions to Indian Railway’s most critical problems through an Innovation Challenge. The initiative would be administered by an Innovation Committee comprising of reputed investors, representatives from National Academy of Indian Railways, Railway Board and ‘Kayakalp’ headed by Tata,” he said.

The government has also begun the process of introducing wi-fi ser- vices at stations, especially for youth and business travellers. He proposed to commission wifi services at 100 stations this year and at 400 more stations in the next two years in partnership with Google.