Twelve years ago, IT engineer Sachin Teke (33) was in a perpetual state of frustration as a commuter travelling from his Nerul residence to his Seepz, Andheri, workplace. He would take a train to Kurla without knowing when the next local would arrive and whether it would reach him on time. After reaching Kurla, he would have to endlessly wait for a bus. And once he would reach his Andheri stop, he would have to haggle with an auto driver for the last mile ride to reach office.
Spending hours on three modes of transport every day, with its attendant uncertainties, was a painful experience. Equipped with the ability to develop cellphone apps, he decided to create an app primarily focussed on Mumbai’s public transport. Teke’s aim was to link the app to databases on the schedules of local trains, buses, and Metro and monorail.
“I wanted every Mumbaikar to have a virtual companion as a guide on the next train or disruption or delays. I wanted people to be able to decide on the best mode of transport at any given hour,” says Teke, who graduated from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Matunga, and whose work experience includes a stint with Nokia. “I created the app m-Indicator after my own frustrating experience in 2006. By 2010, I had quit my job to run the app full-time.”
Starting with a few hundred downloads in its first year, the free app gained popularity over the years and now boasts over a crore subscribers. “Finance was the biggest hurdle in the initial two years, but the fact that my app was helping commuters in distress kept me motivated. I continued developing the app, going to the extent of appointing people to give minute-by minute updates and real-time feedback on train movement,” he says. “My app now earns revenue through advertisements.”
The app contains details about 232 trains making 3,000 daily trips through 108 stations on the city’s suburban train network, and has 84,000 timetable entries, with Teke claiming he is among the first to update databases every time CR or WR revises their time-table.
A key feature is a live chat, on which Mumbai’s 80 lakh commuters share real-time information about the rescheduling or cancellation of train services. “It could be a disruption, accident or any other incident. This information is vital to other passengers travelling on the same route. So I created a channel of communication between commuters real time, and this has worked wonders,” he says.
Commuters say they check the app before commencing a journey so that they don’t have to face any inconvenience later. “I have received positive feedback and thank you notes from nearly 3.8 lakh people,” Teke says. “This has kept me going.”
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