Nandan Nilekani aboard journey of RailYatri

Infosys co-founder and former chairman of UIDAI Nandan Nilekani has made an undisclosed amount of investment in RailYatri, a portal which provides solutions to train travelers. In addition to Nandan, RailYatri’s existing investors Helion Ventures, Omidyar Networks, and Blume Ventures have also participated in this round.

“It’s not just the money which is key to the business, but the right kind of advisors are as important. We are honored to board Nandan Nilekani on our platform,” says Kapil Raizada, Co-Founder RailYatri.

According to Kapil, it’s the uniqueness of the platform which drew Nandan Nilekani's interest in the company. RailYatri uses deep-analytics technology to make intelligent predictions that help travelers make smart decisions for their upcoming travel. The app uses a traveler's mobile GPS to predict a train's delay, in addition to platform number, coach position, on-time history of a train and many other information.

Also read: “In a booming travel space, 80% of the industry is not addressed” – the RailYatri story

The next step for the company will be to fuel the popularity and awareness about the product.

Speaking about his association with RailYatri, Nandan Nilekani says,

What excites me about this platform is the fact that this is a new-age product made by Indians for Indians. The RailYatri app, which intelligently harnesses the power of smartphones, data and mobile payments, has a huge opportunity of impacting the lives of millions of travelers.

Read read: RailYatri brings big data intelligence to Indian railway travel

Launched in 2013 by Kapil Raizada, Sachin Saxena and Manish Rathi, RailYatri has come a long way since then. In November 2014, it raised first round of institutional funding led by Blume Ventures and a US-based angel investor. In June 2015, the company announced pre-series A funding round led by Helion Venture Partners along with Omidyar Network and existing investors Blume Ventures and Ujama.

RailYatri claims to be one of the fastest growing travel apps in India. “We currently serve nearly 2 million users per month, and in the next couple of years we want RailYatri to reach out and help in the travel of each and every traveler in India,” says Kapil.

RailYatri has products including RailYatri Insights, RailRadar and Rail Wisdom. RailYatri Insights’ provides users with intelligent and intuitive data-led predictions such as - where are people travelling to, the busiest train routes, mobile network coverage on routes, and train delays.

This year, the platform launched a medical emergency feature on its android application. It will enable the users to check vital information regarding medical facilities available near to their location.

RailYatri has recently forayed in digital transactional marketplace customization around train travel, which is now enabling travelers book essential services such as premium onboard meals; bus tickets, budget rooms, etc.

RailYatri plans to launch an array of other services, which will make RailYatri app a one-stop destination for travelers in India. These include RailRadar, a map based tool which would give the users real time information on the position of their trains and RailWisdom, a crowd-sourced information platform for stations and trains. The map based platform will give you information about a popular restaurant or a motel near a particular station.

Building consumer apps focus on train passengers is a huge market and the rise of mobile has led to many ventures. Trainman and Confrmtkt are similar ventures in the space.

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