WhereAbout- A Startup To Find Friends Of Friends
Whereabout, enable you to discover, filter and reach out to each of those friends of friends that live around you. Use it for dating, couchsurfing, professional networking or finding your college alumni wherever you go. All you need to do is knock on the doors of nearby folks through the app, and if they respond, start chatting. Yes, as simple as chat!
Now no more of those intrusive friend requests, no need of a reference and a lifelong respite from those creepy strangers that you meet on dating apps. Just keep knocking and let us be the wingman!
Jeet Sharma interact with Harsh Snehanshu, CEO of Whereabout
How did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?
It struck me long back during my final year at IIT. A senior from college, Harsh Narang, had started an innovative venture called PhokatCopy, which photocopied for free on paper with advertisement at the back. I was inspired, and started my first venture. Thereon, many ideas came, were built and were scrapped, in search of something bigger—finally culminating into the current product: Whereabout, which is trying to transform the way people connect locally in the real world.
What is your Product or Service / Offerings to Customer?
Our product Whereabout allows people to discover and chat with people around them, classified as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd connections. Everyday, we cross paths with new people, and currently there’s no way of finding out if there is some mutual connection — either friends or interests or alma mater or work.
What were the challenges before you while setting up this startup?
Forming a team has been the greatest challenge. I burnt fingers by initially on boarding cofounders who weren’t serious enough to bootstrap, to go through the quintessential entrepreneurial grind. I also hired a lot of costly employees, lacking skill set, but eventually turned everything in-house, thanks to joining hands with my current Cofounder & CTO, Ashish.
What are the challenges for startup companies setting up shop in India?
As such, for tech companies, there’s no great challenge. Resources are aplenty for people with the right connections and will-power. People say funding is a challenge, but I don’t believe so. Funding will come to you if you build something that people love and like to use. It’s all about the time.
How is your business model different from the existing ones?
We are not focused on generating money until we achieve sufficient traction. It’s a networking play, and we believe we will be better poised to think of a user-friendly business model as we evolve.
Who are your clients? How do you look at expanding?
We are a consumer company, and our target market are mostly millennials, who are between 17-28 years of age.
The best and worst memories while setting up …
Best has been receiving review from Durgesh Nandan, an entrepreneur, that said: “Disruptor. Potential to replace both Facebook and Tinder.”
Worst memory: no such. We entrepreneurs are made of thick skin. If rejections & failures start affecting us, we would lose focus. It’s all the part of the game.
Your Marketing Plans so that world know you ..
The best marketing you could do for yourself is building a great product that people love to use. We have been able to build one such product and with time, as more and more people join in, we’d become more and more useful.
This interview was conducted by Jeet Sharma , you can reach out to him on jeet@businessworld.in
