Tutai

Tutai is the first to combine a travel and a safety app. It provides real-time, personalized, and location-based information, empowering travelers to avoid tricky situations and discover new places.

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Inspiration

The inspiration for our project came from Monika’s story as a digital nomad. After living in many different countries, she often found herself in tricky, sometimes unsafe situations. She realised that while there are endless apps for booking hotels or finding tourist attractions, there wasn’t a single place truly dedicated to giving travellers the basic information they need in a given moment. There is too much generic information online, and when safety really matters, you need clear, reliable, and real-time support. Monika wasn’t the only one who felt this gap. We brought together a team with similar travel experience and the same drive to make journeys safer and more exciting. Together we are travellers and technical experts: Monika (founder and financial lead), Szymon (mobile developer), Klaudia (designer), and Sandra (marketing & PR).

What it does

Tutai is the travel safety app that tells you exactly what you need to know, only when and where it matters.

  • Safety Alerts give you real-time updates on scams, risks and local “need-to-knows”. Travellers report them, and our system verifies and delivers them through Firebase.
  • Travel Helper gives you the essentials in seconds: emergency numbers, visa requirements, cultural tips, and other vital info.
  • Location sharing is designed so emergency contacts know when someone is in danger, not just where they are.

How we built it

From the very beginning, we knew we didn’t want to build this app in isolation. We reached out to over 100 travelers from 28 countries to understand what they truly needed while traveling. Their feedback became our roadmap. Our community didn’t just test the app, they actively shaped it by sharing ideas and needs through our social media channels. On the technical side, we built the app using Kotlin Multiplatform with Compose Multiplatform, achieving around 80% code sharing between Android and iOS. This approach allowed us to develop and iterate more quickly across both platforms while maintaining a consistent experience for all users.

Challenges we ran into

The journey was far from easy. Our biggest challenge was time pressure: we only started coding in June, and all of us still work full-time 9–5 jobs. We planned to deliver the app on both Android and iOS for the Shipaton. However, the iOS version was blocked by a limitation in Compose Multiplatform. The Google Maps Compose SDK is not available for iOS, which prevented us from delivering the iOS build by the contest deadline.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our app has grown far beyond what we initially imagined. At first, we thought we’d only be able to deliver one feature till September, but we ended up building several key tools for travelers in the Jetpack Compose Multiplatform and Supabase.

What we learned

Despite the obstacles, this has been the most epic journey of our lives. Each one of us has grown tremendously. Monika personally learned “a little bit of everything” - from databases to writing code for map design, from content creation to Figma design. As a team, we gained experience in branding, content creation, and fundraising.

What's next for Tutai

In the end, our purpose, teamwork, and input from users allowed us to create something meaningful: an app built by travelers, for travelers. We still see it as an MVP and are excited to continue developing new features and testing with a wider audience. Our ultimate goal is to create a Waze-style app for travelers on iOS and Android, where users can share alerts with each other in real time. We currently fully support 5 countries, with 165 more available in beta.

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