ConfirmTkt, which has a tie-up with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), is set to expand its online ticket bookings five-fold by December, using Machine Learning (ML) to predict waitlisted train ticket confirmation and suggest alternative travel options.

The Bengaluru-based start-up, founded in March 2015, had received ₹1.5 crore in January 2016 from marquee investors, including Cox & Kings and and Arihant Patni.

“We are in talks for more funding for our expansion plans,” Sripad Vaidya, co-founder, told BusinessLine .

 

In the first phase of expansion, ConfirmTkt plans to expand confirmed train bookings from 2,000 tickets daily to 10,000 by December, he said.

The company will do this through an advanced data and ML system that can predict confirmations for waitlisted tickets with 94 per cent accuracy, and suggest alternative travel routes or trains, in case tickets on direct trains are not available, he said. The rail travel industry is estimated at $4 billion a year.

ConfirmTkt is an online ticket discovery and booking engine that uses graph-based algorithms and utilises multiple quotas available for trains to improve the chances of getting a ticket even for last-minute bookings.

In addition to using its predictive systems and alternative route-finding capability, it also allows real-time train tracking, even in the offline mode (without Internet), using the information gathered from mobile towers on the train route and customer generated information.

Direct booking

The platform also allows users to book tickets directly, instead of on the IRCTC website. Vaidya said. “We plan to revolutionise travel bookings and gain user confidence the way cab aggregators Uber and Ola have done.”

ConfirmTkt also plans to book tickets for cabs, air travel, and other modes of transport.

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