Although most of us know that necessity is
the mother of invention, seldom have we stopped and paid attention to the
stumbling blocks that come in the way of our basic needs, or thought of a
solution to get rid of them. Based on their own series of inconvenient
experiences, a bunch of young engineers based out of Bangalore have come up
with a solution in the form of a website and an app that is sure to help a
large number of people in the country. The solution that their service provides
will solve a problem that has been pertinent for quite some time now.
Around 22 lakh users book train tickets to
travel across India daily. Of these, 30% are left hanging in limbo, unsure of
whether or not their ticket will be confirmed, and are put onto what is known
as the ‘waiting list’. A similar problem was faced by Dinesh Kumar Kotha and
Sripad Vaidya, both engineers from Hyderabad but working in Bangalore. The idea
to change things came from a practical need of having a confirmed ticket booked
for their journey from Bangalore to Hyderabad and back. Sripad started trying
to make predictions based on his past ticket booking experiences which ensured
a greater chance of getting a confirmed ticket. When the predictions started
working out for him, the techie designed an algorithm that could be used by a
lot of other people who faced a similar problem. At this stage, Dinesh joined
in and thus began the work behind creating ‘Confirmtkt’ – a web portal and a
mobile application that predicts the actual chances of a ticket on the waiting
list getting confirmed. The core team has a third member to head the areas of
Growth and Marketing; Pranav Chimulkar, who happens to be a Goan lad from
Ponda.
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Chimulkar says, “Confirmtkt aids in getting
a confirmed ticket every time you travel by train in India. The app can be used
either prior to booking the ticket or after having booked it. Prior to booking
the ticket, the user can use the app and insert travel details like the desired
source, destination and the date of the journey, and the app provides a list of
all the trains on that particular route, along with availability and
predictions. For example, if a person wished to travel from Point A to Point B
by, say the Rajdhani Express which has a waiting list of 40, the app might
suggest the option of booking from Point A to another point on the same route
and booking another ticket from that point to Point B. This means that the
person travelling doesn’t have to change the train but maybe a seat, all the
while ensuring the confirmation of tickets for the entirety of the journey. By
choosing the alternative the user might have to spend a little more than what
he would have paid for a direct single ticket, but it is far less than paying
the extra amount for Tatkal, or to a travel agency, or paying the TC (which
apart from being expensive is unethical too).
The app uses the logic based on prior
actual data, which has details such as the number of bookings done, the number
of tickets cancelled and the number of tickets from the waiting list that got
confirmed, and predicts the possibility of the ticket getting confirmed. While
trying to book a ticket, the app chooses to flash any of three possible
coloured signals. If the user finds a green signal next to the desired train, it
means that the chances of the ticket getting confirmed are as high as 98%. If
it shows orange, then the chances could be between 30 – 70%, followed by red,
which suggests that the chances of the ticket confirmation are below 30%. If a
user has already booked a ticket, upon starting the app, the app pulls up the
PNR number automatically from the SMS that the user would have received from
IRCTC and loads the booking status, the current status and the prediction, all
indicated by similar colour-coding.
Currently, Confirmtkt can be viewed as a
website (.com) or an app which is available by the same name on Android and
Windows platforms. The team believes that in a few weeks’ time, Confirmtkt
should be available on iOS too. From the time of its inception, the app has
received over 3 lakh downloads (mostly on android), and things are only looking
better for this team of young innovators.
