Dogether curates interest-based activities and experiences
Dogether is a peer-to-peer platform where people can discover, book or host unique activities called 'experiences' that are happening nearby.
At a glance
Startup: Dogether
Founders: Hammad Jilani
Year it was founded: 2016
Where it is based: Mumbai
The problem it solves: Helps people discover interest-based activities
Funding: $300,000
Sector: Travel
Dogether lets users book unique curated activities hosted by trusted locals happening in their city and find like-minded people. These activities are called 'Experiences'. Dogether is present in four major cities across India i.e. Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru and have over 150 verified hosts on the platform.
Co-founder Hammad Jilani is an engineering graduate from Indraprastha University, New Delhi. He is a serial entrepreneur who founded his first startup during his college days when he built an action puzzle game along with his seniors.
The idea for Dogether came about during Hammad’s internship at Ogilvy when he realised there was no relevant platform to help people organise activities with others. Hammad undertook extensive market research and started working on the idea, soon after his internship ended. He pitched the idea at Startup Weekend, IIT Delhi and it was selected as one of the top three ideas built over the weekend. After his graduation, he quit his job and started working on Dogether full time.
Dogether's founding team consists of Rohit Gupta as the Head of Technology, S.J. Biswal as the Head of Marketing, Rahul Kumar as the Backend Lead. The founding team met through common friends.
“We plan on being the app every expatriate, professional, and traveller should have and not worry and spend most of his/her time on researching about 'things to do nearby', 'things to do in my city', etc. We are making activity discovery easier for people,” says Hammad.
Dogether started out as an interest-based socialising platform for like-minded people to plan, meet, and share an activity together. It was launched as an app in November 2016. Dogether aimed to make socialising offline easy and planned to facilitate face-to-face meetups with friends or strangers sharing the same interests. The activities which were created by the users on the app, had people showing interest, but when it came to attending the event, the turnout was low. So the team at Dogether decided they would redesign the app, and the in-house team will curate experiences for people to participate in.
“We have grown to a 10-member team of five tech warriors and five marketing ninjas. Dogether has clocked over 900,000 downloads and more than 1,80,000 activities have been planned on the socialising platform. We have over 400,000 registered users on our app. Our gross sales has grown seven times to $5000 transactions happening in February alone.Our community boasts of over 150 verified hosts who provide amazing experiences to our users. We have done sales of over Rs 3,00,000 in six months,” shares Hammad on the growth so far.
Dogether charges a commission from hosts on every 'experience' booked on the platform. It has raised a round from angel investors in Mumbai ($200K) and raised $100K from MOX/SOSV accelerator. “We have a dedicated team that focuses on researching and managing hosts who provide super awesome experiences. We have wide range of activities like spray painting, belly dancing, trekking, scuba diving, nightcycling, etc,” adds Hammad.
“We have plans to expand to Tier II and Tier III cities in India, to give people more options rather than clubbing and going to movies. We plan on expanding within India and globally through strategic partnerships, are in talks with Yanatrips to explore expanding to Korea,” says Hammad on their future plans.
“The travel space is expanding with more Indians having higher purchasing power and hence opting to experience, places and activities within India and Globally. This would only increase in the upcoming years with the advent of over 400 million new smartphones and internet users in India over the next five years. More internet penetration means more exploring capabilities and hence more activities and tours being booked, and destinations being explored.”
