Don't travel alone to a place full of people like you.
Dostana matches you with verified people going to the same city or the same event, on the same dates — then turns that overlap into a small, public, group meetup. One app for trips and events, because a trip is just an event you travel to.
Showing everything — matching weighs same place + same dates first, shared interests second.
Trips & events forming now
Every card is a real group forming around a place and dates. Tap Join group to reserve a spot, Plan to see the meetup, or Chat to preview the group conversation. Spots are capped so groups stay small and actually meet.
People overlapping with you
Matched on destination + dates first. Profiles are ID-verified and reviewed after every meet — that's the trust layer Facebook groups and forums can't offer. Sample profiles for the prototype.
How a trip becomes a meetup
Left: the live group chat for the group you pick above. Right: the four-step loop the whole product is built around. Try sending a message — the group answers.
Post or join a trip / event
City + dates, or an event name — a conference, festival, match, concert. Dostana finds everyone whose plans overlap yours, starting with people leaving from your home city.
Match on overlap, then vibe
Same place and dates is the hard filter. Interests, budget, pace and travel style rank the rest — no endless swiping on strangers with no plan in common.
Plan in the group chat
One chat per group, in-app only. The group pins one public first meet — a café, a tour, a pre-event dinner — with a time and a place everyone can see.
Meet, check in, review
The host checks people in at the meet. Afterwards everyone leaves a quick review, which is what keeps no-shows and bad behavior off the platform.
Why “both” wins
Events give trips a reason and a date. Trips give events a crew. A SXSW trip, a marathon weekend, a work conference in NYC — each one seeds the other, so the app never has an empty room problem in two separate products.
Safety isn't a feature. It's the product.
The #1 reason people — especially women and solo travelers — don't meet strangers from the internet is trust. Dostana is designed group-first so meeting people feels like joining a tour group, not going on a blind date.
✓ Verified identity
Government ID + selfie check before anyone can join a group or send a message. Verified badge is always visible.
👥 Groups, never 1:1 first
First contact is always in a group of 4–8. No DMs until you've actually met at a group meetup.
📍 Public first meets
Every group pins a public meeting point. Check-in confirms who showed up — and builds their reliability score.
⭐ Reviews & reporting
Post-meet reviews, one-tap report/block, and no-shows lose matching priority. Trust compounds over time.
Start your own — be the gravity
Fill this in and your group appears on the board above instantly (in this prototype it lives for this session). This form is the cold-start strategy: one host per city/event seeds a whole group.
The name: Dostana — adopted ✓
Four naming sweeps — coined Esperanto words, plus-one concepts, and 18 Hindi, Urdu and Sanskrit candidates — ended with the warmest word of all: Dostana (दोस्ताना), Hindi and Urdu for friendship itself. Understood instantly, no explanation needed — and dostana.app is registered, so the prototype now wears the real name. The finalists it beat are below; tap one to preview it in the header, for old times' sake.
Still open before launch: trademark clearance for Dostana. As the common Hindi/Urdu noun for “friendship” it's warm and instantly understood, but a weaker trademark in India — and the 1980 & 2008 Bollywood films own search results for the word. The domain, though, is secured: dostana.app.
MVP spec — what to actually build first
Same playbook as DealMeter: web/PWA first on a cheap stack, one niche with real density, native only if it sticks.
🎯 V1 scope (ship this, nothing more)
- Profile: photo, ID verification, interests, intent (travel / event / pro)
- Trips & events: create + join by city/dates or event name
- Matching: overlap first, interests/budget/style second
- One group chat per trip/event, in-app only
- Public meet pin, check-in, post-meet review, report/block
🌱 Cold start (the real risk)
- Launch in ONE niche: Bay Area tech conferences, or Bay Area solo travelers
- Seed 10–15 anchor events/trips with hosts before opening the doors
- Partner with one conference or festival community for the first cohort
- Empty rooms kill social apps — density beats geography
💰 Money, later
- Freemium: premium filters, unlimited group joins, trip boosts
- Organizer listings: events pay to be discoverable to attendees
- Affiliates: stays, tours and insurance booked from the group plan
- Don't charge at launch — charge once meetups reliably happen