An interview with Reeva Sakaria, Co-founder of Yatri – the official app for Central and Western Railways that’s quietly revolutionizing Mumbai’s native prepare commute.
In an insightful interview with Reeva Sakaria, Co-founder of Yatri, we discover her imaginative and prescient for remodeling India’s mobility panorama. Her ardour for innovation and dedication to sustainable journey are reshaping how we navigate city areas.
Are you able to inform us in regards to the inspiration behind Yatri and the way the thought got here to fruition?
Reeva Sakaria: Yatri was based by my two co-founders, each of whom come from CDP India — a 33-year-old IT infrastructure and software program options firm that had been working with Indian Railways for years. Considered one of them has all the time been pushed by a deep sense of public problem-solving.
Throughout a dialogue with railway officers, they flagged a recurring problem: there was no official method for commuters to know the place their prepare truly was. With over 8 million each day riders on Mumbai’s native trains and three,000+ prepare journeys a day, this was a large hole within the system.
That dialog sparked the thought — to construct a trusted, official supply of real-time info for suburban prepare commuters.
We developed customized GPS gadgets tailor-made to railway necessities, put in them in each rake, and launched Yatri as the primary app providing dwell prepare location backed by the railway divisions themselves. What began as a hyperlocal answer has now advanced right into a nationwide imaginative and prescient for mobility.
What particular challenges did you face when creating the Yatri app, and the way did you overcome them?
Reeva Sakaria: Like most startups, we’ve confronted our fair proportion of challenges — from infrastructure to adoption. One of many greatest early hurdles was creating our personal customized GPS {hardware}.
Off-the-shelf options didn’t meet railway security and knowledge necessities, so we needed to construct, check, and iterate till we acquired it proper.
One other large problem was belief. In Mumbai, the place a legacy prepare app had existed for over a decade, getting commuters to modify to a brand new platform took time.
However as soon as folks noticed the accuracy of our dwell prepare monitoring and skilled how seamless it felt, adoption began rising organically.
Are you able to clarify a number of the key options of the Yatri app that set it other than different apps?
Reeva Sakaria: Considered one of our greatest differentiators is that Yatri is the official app for Central and Western Railways — which permits us to supply dwell prepare location knowledge instantly from GPS gadgets put in in native trains. No crowd-sourced guesses — simply real-time, correct motion.
Past that, Yatri is among the first apps in India to make use of GTFS (Basic Transit Feed Specification) to supply full multimodal journey planning.
Customers can enter their supply and vacation spot, and the app recommends the very best public transport choices — throughout trains, metro, and buses.
We’re additionally built-in with ONDC, permitting customers to e-book metro and (quickly) bus tickets instantly in-app. We’re at the moment dwell in 6 cities and can scale to 25 by the top of the yr — bringing a unified, ticketing-plus-tracking answer to cities throughout India.
How do you envision Yatri evolving within the subsequent few years, particularly with the rising inhabitants of Mumbai?
Reeva Sakaria: I see Yatri changing into India’s first true Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform at scale. Our aim is straightforward — whether or not you reside in a metropolis or are simply visiting, it is best to solely want one app to plan, navigate, and pay to your commute.
We wish to deliver real-time knowledge and digital ticketing to each public mode of transport — native trains, metros, buses, and extra — in each main Indian metropolis.
This isn’t nearly comfort; it’s about giving each commuter, no matter their tech literacy or geography, dependable, accessible, and dignified transit.
How do you collaborate with native authorities and railway officers to make sure the app meets the wants of commuters?
Reeva Sakaria: We work very carefully with public transport authorities. Yatri is formally partnered with the Central and Western divisions of Indian Railways, which supplies us direct entry to operational knowledge.
Our workforce stays in fixed contact with management rooms and on-ground employees to maintain customers up to date on disruptions, delays, or adjustments in actual time.
We’re additionally a Community Participant on ONDC — a Authorities of India initiative to open up digital infrastructure.
This permits us to combine instantly with metro and bus operators throughout cities and be sure that the person expertise is seamless, verified, and scalable.
Are you able to focus on any future options or expansions you might be planning for the Yatri app?
Reeva Sakaria: We’re working towards two main targets: pan-India growth and unified ticketing + monitoring.
We’ve seen how dwell GPS monitoring reworked the commuter expertise in Mumbai, and we’re actively replicating that success in different cities. Our integrations with metro and bus methods are rising quick — all powered via ONDC.
Within the close to future, customers will be capable of open Yatri in any supported metropolis and get full public transport data, real-time updates, and digital ticketing — multi function place. We’re additionally exploring gamification, good nudges, and personalization to deepen person engagement.
What message do you wish to convey to commuters who’re nonetheless hesitant to undertake expertise for his or her each day journey wants?
Reeva Sakaria: Don’t fear — this isn’t tech constructed only for the tech-savvy. Yatri is designed for everybody, whether or not you utilize a primary telephone or a high-end system. The app is straightforward, intuitive, and constructed to resolve actual, on a regular basis issues.
Whether or not you’re taking an area prepare, navigating the metro, determining which bus to catch, or simply planning the best way to get from one a part of town to a different — Yatri is right here to make that course of simpler. No extra switching between apps, no extra confusion or guesswork.
For those who’ve ever waited at a cease not understanding in case your journey is delayed or struggled to determine the very best route — that is for you. It’s not about altering the way you journey, it’s about providing you with extra readability, confidence, and management each step of the best way.
What recommendation would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs trying to create options for city transportation challenges?
Reeva Sakaria: Remedy from the commuter’s perspective — not the dashboard’s. An important breakthroughs in mobility come if you perceive what frustrates folks each day, and construct from there.
Additionally, don’t deal with authorities methods as blockers — collaboration with public authorities is essential. A few of our strongest progress has come from working hand-in-hand with the railways and metropolis companies. Whenever you present up with an answer that helps each customers and the system, the assist follows.
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