Tech30 startup Outsy curates meaningful local events for you in Mumbai

After returning from the US, Neeraj Sanghani and Sayali Karanjkar spent a lot of boring weekends as they could not find any suitable option to discover happenings of their interest in Mumbai. They discussed the difficulty of discovering micro events like brunches, city walks, happy hours, shows, and workshops etc., and conceptualized Outsy to fill this vacuum.

Outsy is a Mumbai-based startup that applies latest data technologies to make weekends fun and happening. It was one of the Tech30 companies at YourStory’s TechSparks 2014. The startup focuses on simplifying discovery of fun, outdoor activities by asking your preferences and notifying you whenever such activities are happen in your city.

The startup is driven by Kellogg and IIT alumni, who share a common vision of simplifying ‘going out and having fun’. “After moving back to India we were surprised and frustrated with most people saying there is not much to do and end up going out to eat, drink or watch a movie. However, metros and tier I cities have much more to offer. Moreover, finding what to do, where to go and planning it with friends is cumbersome and time consuming,” says Sayali.

As Outsy heavily focuses on micro events, the startup anticipates working with 500 event organizers such as venues, artists, event managers in a city who will have on average of two events (including F&B) a week.

Importantly, Outsy doesn’t focus on travel segment like a few others like Poshvine. Outsy is for locals in the city to figure out what can do over a weekday or weekend. “We see Outsy as a concierge service that provides you with timely and relevant information so that you can make best use of your time. Outsy is a curated recommendation/discovery platform,” adds Sayali.

This allows Outsy to remove the noise or clutter that exists in a listing platform like Timescity but still provide more variety than a ticketing platform like Bookmyshow. A platform like this is much needed with the advent of new ticketing players like insider.in, and democratization of event business led by players like Explara.

Before Outsy, Neeraj worked with medium as well as large corporates in the US and India. He completed his master in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Chicago and MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Sayali has over 12 years of experience in the US, India and SE Asia in management consulting and business development. She did her Bachelors in Information Technology from the National University of Singapore and MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Pranshu is the third Co-founder of Outsy. He is the technology lead and a data science expert particularly in machine learning and information retrieval. He is an IIT alumnus and has a Masters in Computer Science from Umass.

Besides presence on the web, the startup launched its Android app (link) and iPhone app (link). “Over the last 10 weeks since the launch over 15000 people have downloaded the app. Initial campaigns launched to understand user interest and engagement clearly indicate that people like what we have to offer,” points out Neeraj.

“We started in Mumbai hence we have a major traction there. However, Bengalurue and Delhi are catching up fast. We are focusing on consumer traction, and monetization will follow,” adds Neeraj.

Outsy uses technology along with manual curation to provide an exciting bouquet of events that best cater to the consumers’ interest. The technology scans hundreds of events to ensure that notable events are captured and relevant information is available.

To ensure ‘quality’, the team curates the events based on article reviews and expert opinions. Additionally, Outsy is partnering with various event organizers to gather more and more unique, interesting activities across a variety of entertainment and lifestyle categories such as shows, food, nightlife, music, workshops and outdoors.

Outsy’s custom data analytics and personalization algorithms understand consumers’ preferences and behaviour and continually get stronger in recommendations. This in turn helps brands and venues target their audience effectively.

Unlike on other listings and ticket players, businesses can amplify their offerings and services, maintain their brand identity while reaching and engaging a highly targeted audience on Outsy. This allows the businesses to focus on their core operations and create offline events while leaving the online marketing, promotion and ticket sales to Outsy.

The company is funded by friends and family and plans to secure angel and/or VC funding over the next three months to fuel its growth