TrainKoi

In our country, for various road issues we prefer traveling by train. But we face some problems here, too! Like, trains are often late, but we don't have any idea how late the train can be.Again, while we are in train, we are never sure about where we are now or when we will reach our destination.

So our product to solve these issues is a mobile app. Using IOT teachnology and crowdsourcing technology we have been building an app which collecting and analyzing data of train our app will tell people-

1. How late the train can be.
2. Exactly where I am right now and How long the train can take to reach my destination.

This could change life of train travelers by saving their valuable time. 

70,000 people travel by train every single day. But most of the trains become late. People who arrive the station in time become harassed and remain panic.Because there is no reliable source where they can get to know exactly where the train is now and how long it might take to reach the station.And by talking to to them in stations I have found that around 98% of the people think it's a problem that has no easy solution yet. Most interestingly almost all of them are not satisfied at all by the services being provided by my competitors.

When train becomes late what happens is that we reach the station in time.We wait for the train. As time passes by we wait nd wait. We pay sharp attention for the announcement from the station authority. We ask station stuffs whether they know about the delay of the train arrival. In some stations now a days we see train monitoring screen.But sadly even that doesn't help us timely.

Again suppose I am on the train. I wanna get prepared with my bag and baggage to leave the train or I just wanna sleep. But I don't know where I'm now and how long the train might take to reach my destination.

So our services solve all these issues under one hood. Our app will provide tell you-
1.How late the train can be
2.How long the train can take to reach your destination.
And Through this an user will no more in panic to spend his/her valuable time. Even before going to the station an user can know the location of the desired train sitting at home.

Our solution is a simple mobile app. At first, we designed an IOT based simple solution. That is our app will provide its services by collecting and analyzing data from IOT devices which will be set up in all the trains of Bangladesh. But because of various complications of getting the permission of setting device on the trains from the government, we are working on to collect data by crowd sourcing. We will be parsing GPS data from the users who are on the train. Basically we will be collecting information like latitude,longitude,train detection number etc.Then by analyzing those data our app will be smart enough to tell thousand other users-

1. How late the train can be.
2. Exactly where I am right now and How long the train can take to reach my destination.

We had real struggle to develop our first functional prototype. Because we could not access the train line from google map API. We searched as possible ways we can. But we could get any ready made solution. All we got was one unanswered question on stackoverflow. But we did not give up. We created another app to collect the latitude and longitude of the train line while traveling on train. Though we managed to collect latitude,longitude value from google later on. But then we had to write codes to get distance from any two point on the train line which is already implemented in google map for road ways. We wrote the code with 98% accuracy with respect to google map by using the knowledge of our college co-ordinate geometry. It was really inspiring and interesting matter for us. The when we made the functional prototype using an IOT device and a mobile app. We approached so railway officials and government officials. They made me understand that to get the permission to put that device on all the trains of Bangladesh is almost impossible for a startup like us. But we did not give up. So now we are working crowd sourced solution. We will give incentive to people to share their location data through our app while they are riding on train. And by using that data we will provide all the services mentioned above to thousands other people out there.

Since our solution includes crowd sourcing. It can be said as community driven innovation. Every user will get a feel of helping his/her community. It will also make them feel that they helping to create a system that helps almost 70,000 people per day.So the way we designed the solution is innovative for this problem. Because our competitor is offering a sms solution of this problem. But they only tells you the nearby station. Nearby station does not say much about the exact location of the train.

By doing market analysis we have found numerous apps regarding online ticketing and train related static info and also found some services provided by popular companies like grameenphone, Banglalink etc which lets us know what is the next or nearby station for a specific train. But the nearby station does not mean the location of the train. Because the in between distance of two stations is huge. They all charge 4-5 tk per query which seems overcharged to 100% customers. 

But what we got to know by talking to hundreds of people is that actually user doesn't want to know train's location, rather he/she wants to know the in between distance and time needed for the train to cross the distance and arrive his/her desired station(starting station,end station)
So our service is very specific to user's need. It will provide informations with maximum precision and of cource our information will be updated in real time.

1. 3.

2.50,000.

3.500,000

 Actually when we started we found out some more problems and possibilities.But just to keep our vision focused we sorted out just two problems that I've already discussed. Like when stand back of long serial of people at station to buy a ticket we don't know if there is any ticket available or not.Not only this it will also open the door of automation in Bangladesh Railway.Like train signal in roadways.Sometimes if any mishap observed by anyone then he/she can report to the concerned authority using this app. We are also providing a live train monitoring map where you will be able to see the live movement of all the trains of Bangladesh in single screen.

So the main problem that we are facing is that we are not getting the permission to put device on trains. If we could manage the permission, we could have been in growth stage. And in crowd sourced solution there is financial problem. Because we need money for customer acquisition cost.Legal permission and fund are our barriers.

So for the permission I am stilling trying to connect to right place of government. On the other hand I am trying to implement the crowd sourced solution and launch as soon as possible. Because if we can create an impact the government can trust us to give the permission.

2.

I am an ex cadet of Mirzapur Cadet College which is military based institution where time was a very sensitive issue. I got to learn to give proper value to time. So when I observed such a waste of time in train station,it sounded inhuman to me and the idea of TrainKoi came to me. So since the idea came to me and we got such dedication to work and stick with it for more 1 year,I think we the one who can solve this. We might not address ourselves as expert now. But if everything goes well ,someday we will. because learning new things and constantly developing ourselves better is our main skill.

So our core value proposition is to save people's time by giving right access to information so that they can use their time as their wish. All the train travelers who has smartphone are our potential customer. People just have to download and install the app from google playstore. Our revenue model is quite simple.Basically we will be following subscription model since micro transaction like BDT 2 is still not possible Bangladesh. So we will provide 5 virtual coins for BDT 10. Using one coin user will be able to access all the services we will be providing for once.

We will be participating every incubation and acceleration based competition and manage our fund. If everything runs fine we will experience break even within 6 months. And if we can exceed break even we will be generating a revenue which will easily cover up monthly expenses.

The fund money will help us badly to everything that has to be done right now like customer acquisition cost. Tiger IT foundation can help us by recommending us to government to get the permission. Even TIger IT can help in technical site. So everything is very desirous for us. So this is why we applied.

If the crowd sourced solution fails then we would like to partner with Grameenphone. Because they are the one who is only main competitor. We will simply share equity to share with them.