Station Ticket Booking Agents(STBAs)

. These registered agents will not get any salary but they will get commission only. Generally, the percentage of commission will depend on the turnover and higher the turn over lesser the percentage of commission.

Sales Turnover (RS) Commission percentage payable on sales turnover.
Slab-1 1-15000 15% (minimum ` 500/-
Slab-2 15001-50000 12%
Slab-3 50001-100000 9%
Slab-4 >100000 4% or the rate quoted whichever is lower


These are the slabs what I have seen in a notification. As per this if all other criteria are met the person who is mentioning the least commission will be preferred. The minimum may be four or lower than 4 also if you quote. you will get 9000 for the first one lakh business did in a month and above that, you will get the percentage as mentioned by you in your application.
For example if your turn over is 1, 10,000 rupees.
If you quote 4%, the commission you will get will be 9400 rupees.
If you quote 3% the commission you will get will be 9300 rupees.
If you quote 0% the commission you will get will be 9000 rupees only.
If you quote zero per cent the maximum you can get will be Rs.9000/- only.
Now you think and decide.

What I feel that the commission percentage is pre-determined but what about the outcome of the contract in terms of the money being realized. Unless and until the station has a good outflow of traffic one cannot be assured of good income in return. Moreover, the same day booking for the short distance passengers would be more and the income on them would be negligible and cannot be predicted windfall. For example, the Secunderabad station has many self vending machine kiosk which was helped by STBA and but I could see all of them are not busy and thus getting negligible turnover at the end of the day.

In some places the Station Ticket Booking Agents (STBAs) are making good money as the large number of passengers are going through such stations. On the other hand in the stations where limited crowd is there the volume of the transactions is very less and this will not be a viable business proposition. So before applying for this job one should do some survey around the station and see what is the approximate number of passengers on an average purchasing the unreserved tickets for the short journeys or even long journeys.

The applicant applying for such a position should be at least 18 years of age and must be at least class 10 pass. One has also to submit a certificate of residence proving that one belongs to local area and not from outside places. The application form is to be submitted in Railways along with a photograph affixed on it. Some refundable amount of EMD (usually Rs 2000) is to be deposited with the application. If one is selected for STBA then a security amount of Rs 5000 will have to be deposited by him.

Depending upon the slab of monthly turnover the commission percentage will be payable to the STBA. Up to the turnover of Rs 10 lakhs the commission is fixed in three slabs (15% for Rs 1 to 15000, 12% for Rs 15001 to 50000 and 9% for Rs 50001 to 100000). The 4th slab is for above Rs 100000 where the applicant has to quote rate up to a maximum of 4%. So it is imperative that depending upon the rush of people applying for it one has to quote this figure and may be quote even 0% here. Anyway that is to be done seeing the situation there.

Please also note that ones a person becomes STBA, the ticket selling amount has to be deposited with the station master on daily basis. The cost of computer hardware, channel, tickets and other paraphernalia will be born by Railways.