Bangladesh has no official "where's my train" app. A university graduate built one using passengers' phones, and it added 180k installs in a week

Bangladesh Railway has only one official way to check where a train is: send a paid SMS. Md. Al Amin, a graduate of Jashore University of Science and Technology, built a free app that has passengers share their phones' GPS, so others can see on a map how far the train has got. It grew slowly through word of mouth for six months. In late October, a 3D map was posted on Facebook, and it added 180k installs in about a week. Below: why it took off, why the leader is getting harder to catch, why the money is so thin, and where to go if you want to copy it.

A review 57 people marked helpful

On Sep 9, a user named Eftyaz Ahmed left a review on Google Play for BD Train Tracking. He neither praised nor criticized it. He just raised a question:

"After installing, it doesn't request location permission by default, so passengers have to turn on 'share location' manually while riding. Many people forget, so the app can't show the train's real live position."

By Nov 6, this review was the one under the app that the most people had marked "helpful" (57 people). It names the core of the business: the app produces no data itself; the data all comes from users sitting on the train. The more people on trains with the app open, the more accurate the positions; the more accurate, the more people install.

Two months later, the loop started turning. On Nov 2, the Bangladeshi portal Jagonews24's tech section published a tutorial titled "Where is the train? How to check with the 3D map", whose second sentence reads "A young man named Md. Al Amin invented this app." The next day it ran another piece listing every way to check train positions, starting with the official SMS and then covering this app. In its words, "many people on Facebook are posting their experiences and train-tracking posts using the 3D map."

What it is

In one line: Bangladesh's version of "where's my train".

• Passenger crowdsourced location: you board a train, tap "I'm Inside Train", and your phone's GPS becomes that train's position. The store page is candid about it: "Live data is only available when users on that train are sharing their location." When no one is sharing, it falls back to the timetable.
• One chat room per train: people on the train and people waiting at stations can ask directly "where are you?" or "how late are you?". According to figures Jagonews cites, there are about 15k chat messages a day.
• Sharing with family: send your train's position to family at home, and they open the link and install the app.
• 3D map: trains move across a 3D map that you can zoom, and you can see other trains on nearby lines too. The late-October version added a "fly-in" animation. This is the piece best suited to short videos.
• Arrival alarm: added in the Nov 5 version (v4.8.7). It rings when you're near your stop, even on the lock screen or on silent, and has a backup alarm when offline.

Basic features are free, supports Bengali and English, and is available on Android and iOS (the iOS version launched Jul 30).

What gap it fills

Bangladesh Railway has official GPS data, but it's only exposed through one SMS service: you text "TR" plus the train number to 16318 and get back a text reply saying which station the train is at and how late it is. Each message costs money (about 5 taka), and there's no map. The official ticketing app Rail Sheba only lets you buy tickets and check schedules; it doesn't show live train positions.

And late trains are the norm in Bangladesh. The opening of the Jagonews piece describes the scene: you've bought your ticket, departure time is close, but you don't know whether the train will arrive on time or where it is now. People who have to pick someone up at the station also want to know where the train is first.

The need exists every day, and the government offers no free way to meet it. That's the gap.

How big the growth got

The launch date is much earlier than the store page shows. The store page says Nov 1, which is the date that got reset when the store info was changed. The developer posted on LinkedIn on Apr 12 saying BD Train Tracking was already "helping thousands track trains in real time"; third-party estimates put it at about 100k installs by mid-May.

Monthly new installs (third-party estimate):

Google Play cumulative installs: 10-29 was 410k, 11-06 was 590k, and 7 days later it had added 180k more. Around 11-02 it jumped 78k, and around 11-05 it jumped another 82k, both times right after Jagonews published. The rating count over the same period went from 8,728 to 13,088, and daily new ratings went from 146 to 750–820. 11-06 When I opened the Play store page via the Bangladesh store, it showed 4.8 stars, 13.5k reviews, and #2 in the free Travel & Local chart.

It also sits on the free Travel charts in Saudi Arabia (best rank #12), the UAE, Malaysia and Singapore. All of these have large Bangladeshi worker and expatriate populations who are working abroad and need to travel home, or want to see where a family member's train is (inference; the expat share hasn't been verified).

Where users come from

A generic name. The app is simply called "BD Train Tracking", which is exactly the term Bangladeshis type when searching for this. In early November, searching "Bangladesh train live location app" in English put its Play page as the first result. The first step of the Jagonews tutorial is also "search for BD Train Tracking in the store".

Word of mouth on Facebook. It has its own Facebook group; local pages like Gen Z BD 360 shared a post about the arrival alarm (254 likes); Daily Manobkantha posted a video titled "Local youth invent new app"; and the local media account The Quoted posted a video in Nov 2, "Now you can see live trains and 3D routes", with 13k views.

TikTok alt accounts.@bangladesh_railway_fan1 posted "track Bangladesh trains with BD train tracking" in Nov 1, 11k views, plus a batch of smaller alts with a few hundred to a few thousand views. A journalist account with 89k followers posted "see all Bangladesh train live locations for free" in Oct 25, 277k views, 11.8k likes. The video may not promote this app; unverified.

The app recruits its own users.Share your location with family and they'll install it; correctly sharing location earns points, false reports get you banned. Every passenger can bring in new users.

Almost no paid acquisition.No ads found in the Meta or TikTok ad libraries (not finding them doesn't mean none ran), and its own Facebook page has only 1 followers.

One possible push is timing: Durga Puja falls in mid-October, exams end in late October, students head home, and lots of people ride trains (inference, no direct evidence).

Who it's competing with

No shortage of rivals; the shortage is rivals with enough users.

The product form is nearly identical and the features are easy to copy: TrainKothai added a 3D map the same day Jagonews covered 3D. BD Train Tracking leads on scale: it started a few months ahead of TrainKothai, has about 3.5 times its installs, and adds 4–5 times as many per week. In a crowdsourced product, scale is accuracy, and accuracy brings more scale. Chasing the leader in Bangladesh means chasing something that speeds up on its own.

Where the money comes from: very little

• Ads: the store page says it contains ads, and a reviewer notes "sometimes ads pop up, but for free it's great."
• Subscription: the website lists ৳20/month, ৳40/3 for three months, ৳65 for six months, ৳90/year. You get ad removal and more alerts. ৳20 is roughly $0.16 (estimate). In-app purchases on Play are $0.19–0.69 each.
• The website also has a donation link to "keep the servers running" and a small shop selling travel gear.

Revenue is not public. Ad rates and willingness to pay in Bangladesh are both very low, so each user brings in little money and the business depends on volume (inference). This is a product users love but one that struggles to make real money.

If it were you

One-line verdict: C. The fight in Bangladesh is already over. The leader has network effects, the number two and three copycats are already in the market. What's worth learning is the playbook, which can be moved to other countries, but each user brings in very little money, so work out the math before you start.

Who it suits: developers who live in (or know well) another country where trains and long-distance buses are routinely late and officials offer no free live location, and who can build it alone; people who can speak the local language on Facebook groups and TikTok; people who can accept treating it as public service plus a side project.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone who wants to launch another one in Bangladesh (the leader is pulling further ahead every day, and the fourth copycat has no spot); anyone counting on subscriptions (৳20/month is already the ceiling); countries where the government already offers a good free live location app (check this before you start).

How to do it:

1. Choose the country first. Three criteria: lots of people ride trains or long-distance buses, delays are normal, and there's no free official live location. South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa are all worth checking country by country (this article did not verify each one).
2. Skip crowdsourcing at launch: estimate positions from timetables, and plug in official data where you can (TrainKothai forwards official SMS data). That way even trains nobody is sharing location for have a rough position.
3. Location sharing should be on by default and take one step. The most upvoted complaint about BD Train Tracking is exactly this.
4. One chat room per train and one tap to send your location to family: these two features together drive both retention and acquisition. Add arrival alarms too, a feature riders use every single trip.
5. Name it with the words locals actually type when searching.

How to get users: build something that works as a short video (a train moving across a 3D map) and get the local railway fan and student accounts to film it. Pitch a how-to article to local tech media; two Jagonews stories brought spikes of roughly 80k each. Launch ahead of holidays and exam season, when everyone heads home.

When to be early: there's no single window, because each country runs its own. If someone in your chosen country has already reached the top, the same network effects will block you, so first check who is already building, then launch before the next homecoming peak in that country.

Signs you've read it wrong: ① Bangladesh Railway launches a free official live location app, or Rail Sheba adds live location, which means the gap will be filled by officials; ② TrainKothai catches up within a month or two using free data plus official feeds, which means network effects are weaker than assumed and late entrants in other countries can win on data sources; ③ after the spike, installs fall back to a few thousand a day, which means this wave came mostly from short videos and media, not from organic spread you can sustain.

Data and sources

• Google Play store page (Bangladesh store, 11-06): rating, review count, chart rank, review text, update notes.
• Daily install and rating figures: public Google Play data, 10-29 to 11-06; 5–November monthly new installs are third-party estimates (AppstoreSpy).
• Jagonews24:2026-11-02 "Where's the train? How to read the 3D map", 2026-11-03 "Where's the train? How to check".
• Developer's LinkedIn post, 2026-04-12; pricing from the gatishil.com website.
• TrainKothai: trainkothai.com and public App Store information; Jagonews 24 11-03.
• Facebook and TikTok view and like counts: from each platform's pages, around 11-06.
• Where it says "estimated", "inferred" or "unverified", that's exactly what it means.