Ideas come at times when one least expects it. On an uneventful day, serial entrepreneurs Paras Jain and Snehal Nimje, both 27, when sitting idly at their homes ended up randomly looking through websites to see the sought after places in Bangalore, the town they were in. There were hundreds of suggestions and some of them ended up giving out the wrong information. The duo realised that many others would have faced the same problem while checking out places to hang out in.
In two weeks’ time, pSnehal developed Townista single-handedly while Paras took care of its business development and operations. “Townista is an app to discover interesting things to do in your city. This is for people who are looking to do more than just catching up on a movie and food. Townista users get amazing options like plays, live music and workshops,” adds Paras. The app is currently available on the Android platform and plans to extend to other mobile platforms.
Before Townista, Snehal co-founded India’s first internship portal HelloIntern.com which was later acquired by Angoras Group. The 27-year-old Mumbaiite worked as a Senior Product Developer at IDG funded 3DSoc, a Stanford Alumni startup, for three years. He holds a BTech and an MTech degree from IIT Bombay in Aerospace Engineering. Paras is a Chemical Engineering graduate from the 2010 class of IIT Bombay, he worked as a Management Consultant in Zinnov, a global business management consulting firm for three years. Townista was launched on May 28 last year and the team consists of seven freelancers and two part-timers apart from the founders.
Townista curates data from several blogs, websites and social media and matches it with a user’s interest, providing them with interesting options. “We believe that personalised recommendations are our USP. Townista uses smart algorithms to recommend relevant experiences and provide relevant listing,” says Snehal. The founders recollect how their friends mentioned over casual conversation that Townista helped them discover an amazing event that made their weekend.
A bootstrapped company with an initial investment of `2 lakh, the founders say their biggest roadblock was finding resources, both financially and employee-wise. “We aim to set up this service in three more cities and launch a mobile application for iPhone and Windows within the next two months. Townista is also striving to clock 50,000 users daily and make it a pan-India service within the end of six months,” adds Paras. Aiming to break even by the end of 2015, the founders want Townista to be the go-to app for people who want to find amazing things to do in their cities.
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