Mannan Amroliwala is among the tens of thousands of migrants who reach Bengaluru to realise their startup dreams. He moved to the city two years ago. For about a year, Mannan worked in a crypto company. Then, he quit it to work on his idea for an app for socialising. He noticed people around him constantly asking, ‘Hey, what to do in the city? I want to do something interesting other than just eating out or drinking.’ Though many events happened in the city, people did not know about them. That prompted Mannan to create an app that let people socialise better.
“The fundamental idea is to foster connections through real-life meetups rather than solely virtual interactions,” he says about the app he is working on.
The app, however, was a long-term solution to this problem. So, Mannan thought of a temporary fix. He made a Whatsapp group, wherein he made daily announcements of the offbeat events within Bengaluru. “It allowed me to test the waters for my app and see what works and what doesn’t. It was relatively simple too. Though the curation process demanded time and effort, I didn’t have to build an app or a website. It was just a WhatsApp group,” he says.
