TheRodinhoods

vouch4couch.com: a start-up connecting like minded people through hospitality exchange

Hey All,

How many of you traveled to different city for one night and just for that night paid 2000-2500 INR to a Hotel to just sleep. Many times we go to new city but due to not much knowledge or friends end up our evening in the hotel room watching movies. We want to travel but our budget sometimes does not allow us to travel. Many times we want to meet people like us so that we can have interesting time together but we do not know how to do it?

Well, we also had similar experiences and thus we came up with an idea of vouch4couch.com

What is vouch4couch.com?

In 2013, when we(me and a friend) went to Rishikesh and realized that we couldn’t find proper Couchsurfing host and travelling around Holi meant there were no cheap and good places available for us. We planned to stay for 2 nights but due to shortage of money returned after 1 night. 

This lead to initial development of vouch4couch.com

After probing for next 1 year or so, we finally came with our idea. We started developing v4c last year and launched last November. 

What is in the name?

1. People know that the couch can be vouched (i.e. the verification that we offer differentiate us)

2. Due to popularity of couchsurfing.com, people can understand the product that we offer. 

Vouch4couch.com is a platform for people to meet different people of similar mind and personality when they are travelling in India. We are creating this platform where people can host other people with similar interest and similarly can be hosted by people. It is similar to Couchsurfing as both provide a platform for free accommodation. However we are very different from Couchsurfing because:

1. We are not merely a platform for free hostel. People here try to meet new people in new cities with similar interest. It is a socializing platform.

2. Only verified people can use the platform

3. People are verified online and offline through proper documentation. We charge yearly subscription fees of 1000 INR only. 

4. Women safety through an additional feature for them to hide themselves from men (optional)

5. Regular meetups in cities with a common agenda (Monitored by vouch4couch.com)

6. People can search hosts in different cities as per common hobbies and interest.

Till now there are around 92 members on the platform. We have had few hospitality exchanges already and 2 meetups in Delhi.

Presently people from Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore can join the network. 

 

This Saturday on 21st March, we organized a start-up meet at t’Pot Cafe, Delhi. The theme of the meet was to bring start-ups together on a platform where they can raise their issues and the whole community could help them if possible. This was the second meet up organized by vouch4couch.com and 18 start-ups turned up for the event. There were few people who had no start-up but joined us just to understand how start-up works. 

It was an interesting event as people spent good 3 hours discussing their ideas and trying to solve each other problems. 

Here are few snaps from our last meet-up in Delhi on 21th March:

 

Our Next meet up in Delhi: 3rd Week of April and the agenda is to invite people interested in travelling. We invite all travel start-ups, photographers, travel writers and travelers to join us. 

 We are looking forward to see some Rodinhooders next time.

Also, do not forget to register at vouch4couch.com.

Cheers