15 mins

3 persons

Train leaves in

Dessau - Berlin

RE 7

Platform 6

Onboarded

Swipe when onboard

Wallet Balance

68.9

Economical and fast...

  • Automated grouping of travellers to book group ticket.

  • Automated ticket cost splitting and notifications for payment.

  • Make friends with random university students while travelling.

  • Recommendations to explore Brandenburg in groups.

  • Recommendations to explore museums and attractions with low group ticket cost.

7900

Enrolled students

3

uni campus

180

Travel request/day

NO

Semester ticket

The problem opportunity

  • Hs Anhalt students lack semester tickets for public transportation

  • 7,900 students enroll annually across three campuses: Brandenburg, Kothen,Dessau.

  • Limited part-time work and recreational opportunities given the smaller city.

  • Due to this, Students often need to travel from Dessau to Berlin for work and other activities.

  • But the travel costs to Berlin is high, approximately 22 euros for one-way travel and 44 euros for a round trip.

  • So i developed a solution for fast, easy, and affordable travel by simplifying the group travel ticketing feature.

Current frugal innovation

Lets look at the current scenario of how tickets are booked, by finding groups manually via posting travel request info on various platforms like Facebook, whatsapp & telegram etc.

  • Dominique from Dessau campus wants travel a round trip from Dessau to berlin.

  • On DB app, the one way ticket cost 22.5 Euro and round trip is 45 Euro.

  • So she goes for option to buy group ticket for 5 people which costs 33 euros.

  • Now she has to find 5 people who can travel with him and split cost.

  • She posts that he is looking for people to travel, in facebook group

  • She has to wait now till he get replies from people to travel together.

But is it simple to book group ticket?

“It requires a lot of time and multiple platform to get people onboarded”

Time spent Co-ordinating on:

  • Facebook Group

  • Comment section

  • Telegram

  • Whatsapp

  • Wechat

  • Facebook messenger

  • Voice Calls

  • Coordinating back travel

Current facebook group for travel coordination and booking

  • 3009 total members

  • 180 travel requests/ day

  • 20 new posts per day

  • 10 members join / week

  • This excludes whatsapp, wechat, Telegram

Too slow, too expensive and too complicated !!!

Group travelling costs in different campuses

Bernberg students

Bernberg - Dessau ticket:

Saxony Anhalt ticket:

Berlin Brandenberg ticket:

12.30 €

25.00 €

33.00 €

kothen students

Köthen - Dessau ticket:

Saxony Anhalt ticket:

Berlin Brandenberg ticket:

9.00 €

25.00 €

33.00 €

Dessau students

Berlin Brandenberg ticket:

33.00 €

Per person travel cost :

5

4

3

2

11.6 €

14.5 €

19.3 €

29 €

Per person travel cost :

5

4

3

2

11.6 €

14.5 €

19.3 €

29 €

Per person travel cost :

5

4

3

2

6.6 €

8.25 €

11.0 €

16.5 €

Lets look at The journey

Planning phase

Group of 5 people wants to go for gig in Berlin

The plan is decided on a Tuesday

Each individual

wants to go at different

time in Berlin

2 out of 5 individuals back out at last minute

1 of remaining 3 individual goes to Berlin in morning with a separate ticket with friend

We are remaining 2 individuals now

We want to go to berlin around 8 pm

But since we are just two people we want 3 more people to join

So we post our travel plan on Mitfarzentrale facebook group

We also post it on our whats app group

We dont get any reply

We go ahead and add the names of available persons

Positive

Negative

Stage 3 - Booking return ticket

Stage 2 - Booking

The night ticket was valid till 7 am on sunday

At 8 am we wanted to go at friends  place in Berlin

On sunday evening around 7 we wanted to come back

We search and commented on facebook group

The girl was not responding wether our ticket is booked

And we needed the ticket soon for travel to nearby place

Meanwhile My flatmate had also put my name in the ticket to come back

The girl responded 20 min later that  our ticket is booked and she needs the money

We had to take another 3 euro ticket to reach friends place

Here we could have booked another group ticket from Berlin to Dessau

So we booked our own ticket

We enter the name of available passengers

Ticket is now booked

Positive

Negative

P.O.V of person who books the Ticket : statistics taken from 20 people

Effort - FB, Whatsapp,Telegram, Messenger, collecting names, Booking tickets, sharing tickets

5th day

4th day

3rd day

2nd day

1st day

20 mins

40 mins

60 mins

80 mins

100 mins

120 mins

On an average you spend is

“2 hrs 30 min” planning travel.

  • 20 mins on FB group

  • 1hr:30 min on FB messenger

  • 15 min on DB App

  • 5 min for ticket screenshot share

  • 10 min for train timetable

  • 10 min for back travel

  • 10 min cost split and screenshot

Use case and journey of using the App

  • Onboarding and gathering students information via the college ID card.

  • OCR scanner scans the necessary ID information to maintain trust amongst student users.

Developing a UX to make the ticket booking & itinerary smooth as possible…

  • Users put information about travel plan, any upcoming ticket info is shown in the belly area of the screen

  • User are shown group ticket spots, max five people can fill one group ticket spot.

  • It also shows upfornt how much each person would have to pay in the group ticket.

  • Based on the time preference the user can join a group spot & pay accordingly via different payment options.

  • User can also use third party wallets, like N26 or Paypal to make transactions.

  • When everyone pays their part of the ticket, the ticket is booked and QR code is generated with preferred onboarding time and returning time

  • For the group ticket holders of five random university students travelling , a group chat is generated for better coordination.

  • This group chat can be used to decide train station meeting points, train boarding time & deciding return journey times.

  • Notifications are sent to certian individuals from the group to remind them about payment, if they haven’t paid before the journey starts.

  • Just before the commencement of the travel, the homepage shows train travel start time, and number of persons boarded.

  • Once the users have boarded the train, the home page also shows the places that they could explore with the Berlin Brandenberg tickets

  • The app also uses Upsell feature to upsell other group tickets, mainly museums, events and parks and other group hangouts offerings.

Changing how 7900 students will travel in Anhalt


  • 1,400 students of Dessau.

  • 3,500 students of Köthen.

  • 3,000 students of Bernburg.

  • 7900 Students in total.

Building Group travel trust...

  • Travelbud app creates account automatically by scanning college ID via parsing necessary details.

  • This also ensures a trust among community and reduces chances of abuse and fraud.

Join travelling group spots

instantly, easy cost split

  • Shows various travel spots to join within the selected day.

  • Tickets are auto scheduled for booking once spots are filled.

  • You pay only your share of ticket.

  • Individual group members are notified if they delay payment.

ChatBot to help with group

travel co-ordination

  • Chatbot provides necessary travel itinerary to travel group members.

  • Chat auto expires when the journey is completed.

  • Chat bot helps to decide for train return journey valid within ticket.

The app resolves issues:

  • Accidental multiple ticket booking

  • Reduce uncertainty of bounce rate

  • Penalty for Last minute backouts

  • No more wrong date / time bookings

  • App shows live meeting point areas

  • Hop from any station and find your group

  • Fare saving via night tickets suggestions

Not just Berlin, travel to many places

Explore in group major cities: Magdeburg, Bern-berg, Potsdam , Frankfurt (oder), Cottbus etc.

Upselling features

  • App recommends new travel destination each week.

  • It recommends events, gigs, Job fairs, sight seeing etc.

  • It recommends Trails, hiking & weekend getaway.

  • Group tickets for museum, events, recommends other regional tickets.

Product Development Hurdles

  • Understanding legality of direct ticket booking via DB business account.

  • Handeling of payments via payment gateway

  • Database handling and development and maintenance

Ticket booking based on week basis

sun

sat

Fri

Thu

Wed

Tue

Mon

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Next project -> Industry Vision analytics 4.0