New Delhi: If the train ticket you are looking for is in the waiting list, don’t worry. Another route on the same train may offer you a confirmed ticket for the same destination and Ticket Jugaad, a new free mobile application, will help you find that option.

Developed by two engineering students, Runal Jaju of IIT Kharagpur and his cousin Shubham Baldava of NIT Jamshedpur, the mobile application uses a unique algorithm to find out alternative routes on the same train for getting a confirmed seat.

The mobile application uses the shortcomings of IRCTC as its strength. When a person books a railway ticket on IRCTC website or at a railway station, he has to mention the source and destination of his journey. As a result, you can only see the trains available on the route between the two particular stations. However, it fails to give alternative route options to the passengers between other nearby stations. Every station has its quota of tickets. This deficiency is what Ticket Jugaad has cashed upon.

The Railways allow passengers to board the train from a station which comes after the booking station. The unique and efficient algorithm of mobile app gives you an alternative ticket option in the same train by identifying empty routes, in cases of unavailable tickets, as shown by IRCTC. This increases the availability and provides the user maximum path that can be covered with a confirmed ticket in his preferred class of travel.

It’s very simple and easy to use. The application gives two options. One, info view, which provides the route prototype and alternate ticket information. Two, route view, which shows the availability of alternate tickets on the actual route of the train with all stations and train timings.

At present, the application is available only on Android phones. The developers of the app also plan to bring it on a website and iPhone. They also plan to add other features in the app like PNR enquiry tracking, sharing of PNR information via SMS and email and PNR prediction features.

Explaining the idea, Jaju told PTI, “There are some station-wise quotas for ticket booking. For example if you are booking a ticket from station A, it might show waiting list but when you book it from a previous station you might get the ticket. If you try to find out such stations manually it becomes tough but our app has automated this.”

The application supported by the entrepreneurship cell of IIT also won the first prize of Rs.1.5 lakh in the start-up category of the IIT Kharagpur’s Annual Global Business Model Competition recently.

The app developers have tied up with Cleartrip for booking tickets.

[“source-Livemint”]