India’s mobility app Yatri – City Travel Guide – has launched a first-of-its-kind real-world mobility innovation hackathon called ‘Yatri Hackathon 2025’. The initiative is aimed at involving students in solving urban mobility challenges, with cash prizes and a 100% scholarship on offer.
Yatri Hackathon 2025 is described as a data-powered challenge designed to reflect the complexity, scale, and creativity involved in real-world mobility innovation. The hackathon framework has been co-developed with data science and analytics education platform DataAstraa. The event is intended to bridge the gap between academic learning and industry-scale problem-solving by providing participants with access to live datasets.
Reeva Sakaria, Co-founder of Yatri, revealed her personal motivation behind launching this initiative. She said, “Back in our time, there was a huge gap between what we studied and what we could practically contribute to the tech industry. We didn’t have hackathons like this to expose us to real datasets and real problems. With this hackathon, we want to give students the kind of exposure we wish we had, which is, a chance to experiment, make mistakes, and solve problems that actually impact how a city moves, all in real-time.”
The stated objective of the hackathon is to generate data-driven ideas to address key urban mobility challenges. The participating students will dive into real Yatri datasets to explore mapping unmapped ('headless') train rakes using GPS data, diagnosing DAU (Daily Active User) declines with a data lens, optimizing the GTFS-backed multimode travel feature with filters and fewer route switches, and designing a functional prototype of a real-time commuter chat experience.
Registrations are open until 15 August 2025. The process includes an idea submission round, prototype development, and demo submissions, followed by a final round at Yatri’s headquarters in Mumbai on 20 September 2025. Prizes include ₹15,000 for the first place, ₹10,000 for the runner-up, and a scholarship package from DataAstraa valued at ₹50,000, along with free course access, an internship or project opportunity, and recruiter visibility through its platform. The hackathon is open to undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD students from across India. Both team and individual entries are accepted, though working professionals are not eligible.
Yatri noted that public transport systems in India still operate in silos and that its GTFS-powered platform integrates different modes into a single interface with real-time commuter information. By engaging students in challenges such as GPS accuracy, user retention, and multimodal optimisation, the company aims to raise awareness of the civic responsibilities involved in developing public mobility infrastructure.
