Having lived in Mumbai all my life, it's natural that my best memories are closely linked to my travels on the city’s local trains. That mad haste to secure a seat in a Churchgate (Fast) at 6:30 pm; the crazy guesswork of wondering whether the Andheri (Slow) 7 am will show up at its designated platform or have a last-minute shift; and the familiar anxiety of staring down the tracks, trying to decode from the distant headlights whether the approaching train is yours — or the one right after it.

But most of the 8 million commuters who use the Mumbai locals daily do not enjoy the luxury of time. Every second counts. And to navigate this maze of travel, a sister duo — Reeva Sakaria and Lakhi Sakaria Chowdhary — created the Yatri app, a live train tracking application for daily commuters. 

By Mumbaikars, for Mumbaikars

“If you’ve lived in Mumbai long enough, you’ve known there should be something like this,” Reeva shares at the outset. “While there are apps that display train information, there wasn’t one official digital information centre for railways. That’s what we wanted to build with Yatri,” she says. 

As the official partner of the Indian Railways, working with both the Central and Western Railway divisions, Yatri enables commuters to check the train’s live location. 

You can find the nearest station o­n the map, type the source station, and track the local train of your choice. It lets you gauge how close or far you are from the train. App users can also mark their favourite trains and routes to receive custom notifications. 

The geo-location of commuters guides them to the nearest station. The app’s built-in voice recognition lets commuters speak the source and destination station names........

© The Better India