Sisters Build App Tracking 3,000 Mumbai Trains Daily

For 8 million daily commuters in Mumbai, every second counts when catching a local train, and two sisters just made those seconds a lot easier to track.

Reeva Sakaria and Lakhi Sakaria Chowdhary created Yatri, an app that shows exactly where your train is in real time across Mumbai's massive network. Their solution came from personal frustration: staring down tracks, squinting at distant headlights, trying to guess if the approaching train was theirs or the next one.

The challenge was bigger than they expected. Mumbai runs over 3,000 trains daily, mixing brand new AC coaches with decades-old cars, and no GPS tracking system existed that worked across all of them.

Lakhi, who studied at IIT and IIM Ahmedabad, spent 15 months building multiple prototypes. They couldn't use off-the-shelf GPS devices because Mumbai's trains run on direct current electricity and face unique signal challenges in tunnels and dense urban areas.

Their first idea was a card-machine-type device, but they quickly realized motormen already juggle enough responsibilities. Instead, they developed custom GPS devices that automatically transmit location data without requiring any action from train operators.

The testing phase was intense. Team members rode trains all day while others tracked data from outside, comparing GPS readings to actual train positions second by second. They installed Bluetooth sensors at stations and refined their algorithms until the accuracy was perfect.

The app launched in July 2022 as the official partner of both Central and Western Railway divisions. Users can speak station names aloud using voice recognition, mark favorite routes for custom notifications, and find the nearest station using geo-location.

The Ripple Effect

Beyond just tracking trains, Yatri has become a full transport hub. The app now includes metro ticketing, multi-mode transport planning, and even lets users report incidents directly to authorities.

Railway control rooms send real-time updates about mega blocks and service disruptions straight to the app. What started as two sisters solving their own problem now helps millions navigate one of the world's busiest commuter rail networks.

With 2.1 million downloads and counting, Yatri proves that the best innovations often come from people who deeply understand the problems they're solving. The Sakaria sisters didn't just build an app; they gave millions of Mumbaikars their time back, one accurate arrival prediction at a time.