Where friendship pays: The idea behind social experience start-up MyScoot

Loneliness is on the rise with millennials on the move, following work opportunities across cities and countries. “I was completely alone. It was difficult to make friends to hang out with, whenever I would move to a new city,” said Suyash Sinha, the chief executive officer (CEO) of MyScoot, a platform for meeting new people with home-hosted experience.

It all started with a get-together he and his friends living in Delhi hosted in 2018 where 15-20 people turned up and everyone wanted to keep it going. They launched a Google form and created a Facebook page. In a few days, 500-600 people signed up and “that’s when we seriously thought it as an opportunity,” said Sinha, who founded the start-up along with his friends Somvir Yadav, Sidharth Rawat, and Akhil Tripathi – all 30 and under — in September 2018.

The Gurugram-based events marketplace is operating from a website and is present in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru with 5,000-plus users.

It raised $150,000 in the initial round from California-based seed accelerator Y Combinator in March this year. In July, the community platform closed a seed round of $1.7 million (Rs 11.7 crore) from Lightspeed India Partners, Venture Highway, Mayfield India, and angel investors such as Kunal Shah, CEO of CRED, and Maninder Gulati, chief strategy officer at OYO Rooms.

The Airbnb-model inspired platform offers guests to host and take part in dinner meetings, salsa dance socials, board games, and backyard bonfires. There are two options on the website — either browse and check out all the gatherings happening around or choose to host one. Those interested will have to go through a five-step verification process. The start-up helps the host plan logistics and structuring of the event. It also sends in a representative to the party to help prevent any untoward incident.

The host selects guests and puts a price for the event depending on the logistics planned. On average, the host makes a profit of between Rs 3,700 and Rs 4,000 per event, and the start-up gets proximately Rs 2,000.

“Myscoot is a platform that sorts out your weekends. I think a new bunch of people, crazy games and a secure environment to interact is what makes it happening,” said Aditi, a MyScoot user.

The start-up plans to expand to cities where it is already in over the next six months with the help of the recent fundraise. The plan includes hiring a core team for handling supplies and marketing. In terms of tech, the start-up will hire developers to help it launch the app in the next two months.