The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) handles all online and mobile ticketing for the Indian Railways, the largest passenger carrier in the world, with an annual footfall of more than 8 billion. The IRCTC wished to monetise its data assets and floated a tender in July 2022 to engage a consultant for its data monetisation initiative. The tender faced severe backlash on social media from the lay public as well as privacy rights advocates, and invited the scrutiny of a Parliamentary Committee of the Government of India. Faced with this opposition, the IRCTC recalled the tender. This case allows students to analyse if there is value to IRCTC’s data monetisation project and, if so, for which stakeholders. Should the tender be redesigned or should the IRCTC or Indian Railways do this exercise internally? Can data monetisation coexist with data privacy of stakeholders or should this project be abandoned? Would a tender for hiring a consultant for data analytics have seen as much resistance? The case highlights the importance of a tender document to be seen as a medium of communication for the lay public and not just as a commercial document for vendors.