 "Booking a confirmed railway ticket just got easier")
If your travel plans are sudden, you are sure to end up with a wait-listed ticket. The uncertainty about whether your ticket will be confirmed, which goes on until the last few hours before the journey, can drive you crazy. Sripad Vaidya and Dinesh Kumar Kotha faced the same problem every time they planned to travel to their home town in Hyderabad from Bengaluru. So they found a solution and turned it into their new venture – ConfirmTkt.
ConfirmTkt predicts the confirmation chances of a wait-listed ticket by using machine-learning. This technique learns from its past experiences and evolves the future prediction process. It also takes into consideration various parameters such as seasonality (like a major festival or holiday period), travel day (weekend or weekday), travel class, and reservation quota. It maintains ticketing trends for weekends or holidays separately, as trends during these days often vary.
The duo have tackled India’s transportation woes before. They came up with an Android app called Meterup which provides fare estimates for motorized rickshaws (dubbed “auto” in India) that would help users negotiate fares with auto drivers. The app, however, didn’t gain traction.
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The start-up hasn’t focused on revenue yet. “Our primary focus till now has been user acquisition and product development.” says Vaidya.
Last month, ConfrimTkt raised angel funding from a group of angel investors including Pravin Agarwala, who is a serial entrepreneur. Agarwala currently heads various start-ups and is also the CEO and co-founder of BetterPlace, which works on safety solutions.
This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.