Pyka SMS Service Tells Indian Train Commuters to Wake Up, Get Off

According to the Indian Railways’ Wikipedia page, 30 million passengers travel by trains daily in the country. With such a huge network in place, there is still a lack of customer services to make life easier for these passengers. Ideophone’s latest product, Pyka, aims to make train commutes more enjoyable for people by using their mobile phones to call them when their destination is approaching.

Once signed up to the service, Pyka starts calling a user 20 minutes before the train reaches its destination, and keeps calling until the person wakes up and takes the call. The service is not only for those who need sleep on their daily commute, but also those who are taking the train to an unfamiliar place and need to know when should they should prepare to get off. It’s useful, too, for those who do not wish to stay awake the whole night waiting to receive guests at the station.

Here’s how it works. You send a simple message to 92200 92200 that includes your train number and station code, and this sets up a wake-up alarm for you. Then, 20 minutes before reaching your destination, Pyka calls you – et voilà you’re up!. This service has the potential to make the lives of millions of Indians just a tad bit more comfortable.

I spoke to one of the Ideophone’s team members, Sundar, to learn more about Pyka’s service:

1. Where did you get the idea for Pyka?

Pyka occurred to us when we were traveling by train together. I found that a lot of people in our carriage woke up to get off at Perambur or some station early in the morning, and were kept awake anxiously waiting for their destination to come. Since our whole team was there, we thought, this must be solved. Because this issue happens to a lot of people who travel by train. They lose sleep as well as unintentionally disturb other passengers. In its original form, we planned a download-and-install app, but then we gave up on that because using GPS in the app will drain the battery. Also, due to platform fragmentation we wouldn’t have enough users. Only when we hit upon the idea of using simple SMS and voice calls did we set out for a launch.

2. What if my train gets delayed? Will Pyka change the alarm time?

Yes, Pyka keeps track of the train dynamically even if it’s delayed. We have an arrangement with the rail network as a pilot project. Also, we have built predictive analytics of our own, which would adjust the time of the scheduled call.

I would like to add that on a weekly basis, around 500-700 users are using Pyka, and the call accuracy has been decent. The number of users increases during the weekends as more people prefer travelling long distance on trains then. We are expecting more users, and are planning to monetize it.

3. Is there a revenue model? Do you have investors?

We have multiple options for generating income through Pyka. We’re talking to ticketing organisations (I can’t name them) who would add this as an add-on to ticketing. Also, we’re in early talks with two telecoms operators. Thirdly, if the railways want it as a passenger amenity, they could automatically set this alarm by letting us operate it. We’re also thinking of a new form of advertising to monetize this.

We’re in talks with some angel investors for funding. They understand that it’s a huge market overlooked by international and domestic players, partly because it’s difficult to navigate, and partly because people don’t think of rail and mobile in a single sentence. Hopefully, we’ll pull of a few deals soon.