IamHere brings people with similar interests and hobbies together and provides an easier search for professionals in your area.
IamHere is a Bengaluru-based hyperlocal community network centered around the idea of collaboration and hyperlocal discovery. Its founders, BITs alumni, have decided to utilize their skills to make your neighbourhood feel more connected.
This app currently works for Bengaluru only, and here one can tag themselves as a dancer, foodie, doctor, fitness trainer, etc. These people will then show up on the map and will be able to connect with others through chats, events, and stories.
The Origin of IamHere
Naren, Deepa, and Rajesh had exemplary careers following their engineering. Naren worked for Cisco and Schneider Electric, Rajesh for startups, and Oracle and Juniper. Meanwhile, Deepa in Amazon and Redbus had gained profound product management experience.
In the last year, they have put together a brilliant team of people from Flipkart, Micromax, and other companies. Their friends from companies like Nokia, Deloitte, and Myntra also helped set up the prototype. They started off with an investment of 10 lakh and now have over 20,000 users.
The USP of IamHere is its top-notch user experience, ensuring a better way of connecting with people in a couple of minutes. It also protects the privacy and maintains the anonymity of its users. Other apps aim to bring people together, but they either deal with very specific hobbies or apps like Whatsapp, which limits itself to those on your contact list.
While Google can map places, you can’t find people on it. And Facebook wouldn’t get you those who are nearby. These are doing great work on their own, in their spaces.
But unlike these, IamHere delivers a hyperlocal alternative by putting people on a map with their interests and hobbies. Iamhere provides a one-stop shop for all of your hyperlocal needs.
The Backers
The first 1,000 users were friends, acquaintances, and such, after which people of Bengaluru were free to join. Partnerships with organizations like World Bank, Sunday Soul Sante, and Ramaiah helped bring a much-needed user base to the platform. Small businesses were also brought on to help them find clients and distributors.
By signing an MoU with Guidestar India, IamHere will conduct the biggest gathering of NGOs in India. This will aid people in finding them and knowing about their mission, campaigns, and how they can donate to them. The idea is to create a service akin to Uber and Google Maps but with NGOs.
There are already several success stories of businesses growing their sales; one example is Nitin Kora. The leading distributor of Seeds2Oil has admitted that IamHere has helped him hire sales executives and raise profits.
The Business Model
IamHere’s business model is to raise revenue through hyperlocal ads or promotions both on the platform and through external platforms. For example, a guitar teacher can offer a discount of 15 percent for music enthusiasts. A gym can run a campaign and give membership discounts to users.
The technology used by IamHere is one of the latest in the industry. They have secured partnerships with Google and Amazon for the Maps and Cloud services. The app’s front end is designed using industry-popular languages like Python and Java. The infrastructure is in AWS, and the technology used is a software stack.
Though in this same sector of hyperlocal discovery, a couple of other businesses have started off. MagicPin and Klozest are the most popular, but they are yet to break even.
The Future
Going pan-India is one of the biggest goals of IamHere, and Daan Utsav is a step in this direction. They are also helping with the Goonj Campaign on their platform across 10 cities. People can find the collection centers closest to them and donate easily.
And they are also planning to include a total of 10,000 NGOs across the country on the platform. And will be running donation drives, events, and campaigns on their app through the partnership with Guidestar India.
An MoU has been signed with iNurture, an education company that aids students in getting employable skills. This will build a great collaboration with students from over 100 colleges iNurture is partnered with. Expanding to major cities in India is a goal for the next year by raising angel investments and perfecting their model.
Hyperlocal discovery is not a new venture in India. Loquery, and LocalOye, and many other hyperlocal startups have died out due to paper-thin margins and scarce revenue streams. V Ganapathy of Axilor Ventures believes that scaling the idea of hyperlocal discovery could lead to great success.
So we can safely say that Hyperlocal discovery is one of the new ideas with tremendous potential. And can undoubtedly prove to be a game-changer for social and economic sectors. All we can do right now is hope that IamHere pioneers this field and its expansion on a country level.