Ipsator at IIMA: Orchestrating Food Delivery On The Go
Introduction
On 21 April 2026, Ipsator co-founders Abhinav Kushwaha and Gaurav Kumar were invited by the Centre for Digital Transformation at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad to speak on ‘Orchestrating Food Delivery On The Go’. The session examined how Ipsator’s work on IRCTC eCatering grew from a digital product into a nationwide ecosystem built for scale, interoperability, and public accountability.
From product to population-scale infrastructure
• A Digital Public Infrastructure perspective: The speakers placed IRCTC eCatering in India’s wider DPI conversation alongside systems such as UPI, Aadhaar, and DigiLocker. They explored how PNR-based context, live train data, and deep integrations across stations, vendors, aggregators, and railway systems create a unified operational fabric.
• An academic exchange: IIMA students, PhD scholars, and faculty examined the platform’s evolution and the difficult questions behind designing an inclusive, interoperable service for a railway network serving 13 million passengers every day.
• A practitioner conversation: A second session with senior leaders from HUL’s executive education programme went deep into product decisions, operations, partnerships, finances, customer experience, and the realities of scaling a public-facing platform.
Summary
The invitation was a meaningful recognition of Ipsator’s journey with IRCTC eCatering—and an opportunity to share what it takes to turn complex product engineering into dependable, population-scale digital infrastructure.
From the IIMA sessions
