6 weeks, 360k installs, zero revenue: how an Indian train app caught Google's spillover search

Find My Train is an indie app built by a developer in India for checking train schedules. It offers live train tracking, PNR status, seat info, coach position, offline tracking, and offline metro timetables for 16 cities. It launched in Sep 21, and by Nov 6 it had 360k installs, ranking #22 in the Travel category on the India Google Play Top Free chart. No single feature is new to the market. There are no ads and no in-app purchases. What got it going was a clear name, good timing, and a product that covers enough ground.

A person who couldn't download the app

In Sep 28 2026, a user named Divyanshu Singh posted in the Google Play Help Community under the title "Please download where is my train". The body was one line: "Can't download where is my train". A volunteer replied with eight troubleshooting steps: clear the cache, free up storage, turn off the VPN… The thread was then locked. Someone on r/indianrailways had asked the same thing on Reddit.

Where is my Train is the Indian train app Google acquired in 2018. It has 571M installs and added 2.18M more in the past week (Google Play installs, 11-06). About 20M people in India ride trains every day, and nearly everyone who gets a new phone searches "where is my train" in the Play Store.

A week before that thread, in Sep 21, an app called Find My Train was listed under the package name find.mytrain.where. The day after launch, a user named Mrinal das left a long five-star review: "Really useful for people who travel by train! Live tracking, PNR, timetable, coach position and offline tracking work especially well... so many railway features in one place." By Nov, 6,47 people had marked it helpful. A complete review like this one, posted the day after launch, looks like it came from friends or seed users (inferred).

What it is

An app that packs in everything people need to check when riding trains in India. The store page splits it into four stages of a journey: before departure, check timetables, PNR, seats and connecting trains; at the station, see trains arriving at each stop, platform numbers, coach positions; on board, live position, offline tracking, arrival alarms, home screen widgets; in the city, plan routes with offline metro maps for 16 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Patna and Agra. The interface supports English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and 12 languages in total.

It doesn't earn money either: the Play listing says no ads and no in-app purchases, and the data safety section says "no data collected, no sharing with third parties". There's no website; the privacy policy is a Google Doc, the support email is [email protected], and the developer info page is credited to Roshani Gaurav Dahake, India.

How fast it grew

Figures before October are third-party estimates; November's are Google Play installs. The curve is stepwise: it surged from early October to the 21th, was nearly flat from 10-22 to 10-29 (1,000 to 5,000 a day), then jumped twice more from 10-30, about 40k each time. Over the last 7 days it added 102k.

On the chart, it has sat somewhere between #18 and #26 in India's Travel free chart every day from 10-29 to 11-06; it reached #39 to #43 in the UAE, #71 to #80 in Saudi Arabia and #137 to #180 in Singapore. The Indian diaspora there is likely driving those downloads.

India store page: 4.6 stars, about 890 reviews (11-06). Reviews are only about 0.25% of installs. For comparison, Where is my Train is about 0.9% and ConfirmTkt about 1.3%. That's low: either the app doesn't prompt for ratings, or many people install it and don't use it much (inference).

Where the users come from: the name, not ads

First, what's missing. No media coverage. Over 60 days there isn't a single discussion on X. On YouTube there's one video showing how to use it, with 140 views. TikTok is banned in India. Its volume isn't coming from content.

The most likely source is Play Store search. "Find My Train" is a common way Indians refer to a train-tracking app, and the package name find.mytrain.where packs in where, my and train, which lines up with the query "where is my train". Where is my Train gets about 300k installs a day, so if even a few percent of its searchers tap a rival, that's enough for Find My Train to pull 10,000 to 20,000 a day (inference; we can't see where it ranks in results). People who can't get the official app, like Divyanshu, also naturally install something with a similar name that looks legit.

Then there's seasonality. Mid-October to mid-November is when Indian trains are most crowded: Dussehra, Diwali (around Nov 8 this year) and Chhath send tens of millions of people home. Its two surges, 10-07 to 10-21 and 10-30 to 11-05, fall right in that window (inference).

Third is the chart. Once it's in the top 30 of Travel, the chart itself drives views. Its "similar apps" on the store page are ConfirmTkt, RailYatri and Chennai One, and it's likely listed in their similar-app lists too.

Is it paid acquisition? The curve is stepwise, with a week-long pause in the middle, like a budget switched on and off. But none of the ad libraries we checked has a record of it (not finding one doesn't mean it didn't run ads), and it doesn't make money: Indian Travel apps cost ¢5 to ¢10 per install, so 360k installs would cost $2k to $40k. A solo developer burning cash like that has little motive. This one can only be marked "unconfirmed".

Why people who searched for it stay

Someone searching "where is my train" sees a wall of similarly named apps. Take Crytonix's "Live Status - Find My Train": same name, 1.11M installs, ads, 2.9 stars. Among that pile of name-riding apps, one with 4.6 stars, no ads and screenshots that look like a real product gets better clicks and retention.

The reviews say the same thing. In October 3, a user named Shrijib Dey gave it four stars: "Clean, smooth splash screen… works fine overall, no bugs, works offline, easily 4 stars." He took off the fifth star because searching for train numbers dumps the whole list at once, "just like Where is my Train." The app he compared it to was the original.

It also updates often: every 6 to 1.0.12 days. The Nov 3 release notes open with "🚇 New: 16 cities' metro, fully offline!" and add interchange trains, train timetables and live station boards. On metro, neither Where is my Train nor RailOne, the official rail app, covers that many cities, and each city name plus "metro" is a fresh batch of search terms.

So differentiation is only half the story. The name and season bring people in; whether they stay, leave a good review and keep their ranking depends on the product. Its installs over the last week (100k) are already double those of Track My Train (52k), a veteran in the same category.

Who it's competing with

At the top of this category sit Google and the national railways, and underneath are hundreds of copycat apps. I found no sign anyone copied Find My Train itself. It also has no iOS version. On iOS, more than a dozen copycat apps called "Where is my Train" exist.

Its weak spots

First, there's no moat. It's free, ad-free, works offline, and Google's version already does the same. What it adds, metro and "everything in one app", anyone can add. Second, there's no money. Without revenue it can't fund paid acquisition to amplify growth. Once the festival passes and search demand falls, whether it slides back depends on the late-November numbers. Third, the name. The store page says it is "not affiliated with Indian Railways or IRCTC", but the name and package are built around another brand's search term, so it risks a rename or delisting from the store (inference).

If it were you

C. What's worth learning is the playbook: in a must-have tool that big companies offer free and dominate, claim a spot with a name that matches how people search, and build a fuller, ad-free bundle that catches the search overflow from the big players. But copying an Indian train app isn't worth it. It fought its way up through a pile of copycats, and it still has no revenue.

Who it suits: developers who have built Android utilities, understand ASO, and can iterate quickly alone; people in a country with a local must-have (rail, buses, metro, visas, electricity bills) that's only served by official or big-company apps, ideally with the local language.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone who wants to make money from it but won't run ads; anyone who wants to fight Google and RailOne head-on in Indian train status checks; anyone who dislikes watching store policies daily or worries about getting the name reported.

How to do it: pick one country or one metro cluster and merge the lookups scattered across several official apps into one, working offline, in the local language. Use the phrase users actually search for in the name and package, but avoid other people's registered trademarks. Decide how you'll earn before launch: an unobtrusive banner ad, or a small one-time purchase that removes ads and adds reminders for frequent commuters. In the first few days, have people you know leave real reviews, and show a rating prompt once a user has checked a train.

How to get users: Play Store search is the main channel. Fill the title and short description with the terms locals search (train status, PNR, city names plus metro), and add a new batch of search terms with each update. Write release notes like product announcements. Time launches for peak travel: in India that's Diwali, spring break and summer holidays when people go home.

Deadline: if you want to chase adjacent demand in India, the next peaks are Holi and the 5 2027 pre-summer home trips in March, and the June summer holidays. Get listed and collect ratings before the end of February.

Signs you misjudged it: ① after the late-November festival ends, its weekly installs drop below 20k, showing it's seasonal one-off traffic, not a business that retains users; ② it gets renamed or delisted, or it stops ranking near the top for "where is my train"; ③ the reverse: if it adds ads or paid features and still holds ratings above 4.5 with weekly installs holding up, the playbook also works for monetization, and it's worth moving it up a tier.