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IRCTC Partners with ixigo for Hotel Bookings
MUMBAI: Travel marketplace ixigo has partnered with IRCTC to exclusively power hotel bookings for IRCTC users.
Through this partnership, ixigo’s wide range of accommodation offerings from its domestic and international hotel partners and OTAs will be available on IRCTC’s web and mobile platforms.
Railway travellers can now go to IRCTC hotels and compare budget and luxury hotels across prices, ratings, reviews and amenities through this new hotel search and booking platform. ixigo searches and compares over 40,000 hotels from all leading travel websites and allows travellers to filter by offerings such as ‘pay at hotel’ and ‘free cancellation’.
IRCTC CMD Mahendra Pratap Mall says, “Our partnership with ixigo is a part of our efforts of enhancing service offerings to railway customers. The smart and personalised hotel booking options aggregated from multiple online travel sites will help IRCTC deliver affordable accommodation to users through ixigo’s simple and innovative hotel platform.”
ixigo CEO and co-founder Aloke Bajpai adds, “We are delighted to power hotels for IRCTC and extend our offerings for their large base of rail customers. As a company, we have a decade-long commitment towards understanding the pain points of train travellers and solving them. Through this partnership with IRCTC, ixigo’s hotels meta-search technology will be made available to fulfil the government’s vision of providing more convenience and services to rail travellers.”
IRCTC’s website and app witnesses over seven lakh train bookings a day and through this exclusive partnership with ixigo, it aims to fulfill the hotel booking requirement for thousands of travellers every day. Rail travellers will benefit from exclusive deals and discounts as ixigo will aggregate and compare prices across branded budget hotel aggregators and OTAs on IRCTC.
Launched in 2007, ixigo is India’s leading travel marketplace, with a user base of over 100 million travellers. ixigo allows you to compare and book from 120+ travel suppliers and OTAs across flights, hotels, trains, cabs and destinations.
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Practo names Cijo George as vice president of artificial intelligence
New vice president of artificial intelligence to mine healthcare data and sharpen care delivery
BENGALURU: India’s healthtech race just picked up speed. Practo has appointed Cijo George as vice president of artificial intelligence, tasking him with wiring AI deep into the company’s sprawling healthcare platform.
George will steer AI strategy and execution, embedding machine intelligence across care navigation, doctor-facing tools and overall platform intelligence. He will work across product, engineering and clinical teams to rewire how patients search for and access care — and how doctors deliver treatment with greater consistency and precision.
He reports directly to Shashank ND, co-founder and chief executive officer.
Shashank ND said years of building healthcare data across patients, providers and treatment outcomes had laid the foundation for more advanced AI applications. Artificial intelligence, he added, can unlock the value of that data to improve patient outcomes and equip doctors with actionable insights. He described George’s experience in building production-grade AI systems as closely aligned with Practo’s long-term vision.
George brings nearly two decades of experience spanning machine learning, AI platforms and product engineering. Most recently at Observe.AI, he led work on large-scale AI systems deployed by global enterprises. Before that, at Belong.co, he drove platform and AI initiatives focused on search and personalisation in the HR technology space. He also worked with the Advanced Technology Group at NetApp, contributing to machine-learning and data-science projects for distributed systems.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Science with a master’s degree in high performance computing, George said the chance to apply AI to directly improve patient experience and clinical delivery drew him to the role. Practo’s scale and its extensive longitudinal healthcare data, he added, offer significant room for innovation.
The move comes as digital health platforms double down on artificial intelligence to boost patient engagement, streamline provider workflows and sharpen decision-making. For Practo, the prescription is clear: turn data into diagnosis, and algorithms into advantage.
