Veroloop: Bringing Digital Connections to Real Life
The world is becoming more and more digital; from social interactions to business meetings we are missing the benefit of true human interaction. Veroloop is setting out to change that. Veroloop is a geosocial networking application that lets you discover and connect with people that are in your same location. The Veroloop team is made up of Kunal Kumar MBA ’18 Co-Founder and CEO, Co-Founder and CTO Bhanu Prasad, Co-Founder and CFO Hiroaki Kainuma MBA ’18, and VP marketing , Ruchika Narula.
“We help professional and students leverage our platform at colleges, events or at places they regularly visit to make the best out of their networking opportunities at a given location,” says Kumar.
The Idea
The Veroloop team was inspired by the number of “connections” we make in our lives, but the inability for people to feel connected. “We are so used to online social/professional platforms that we fail to see the people around us. What happened to those days when we actually made an effort to talk and build a rapport with people? We need to reflect as to how we can connect better with others,” says Kumar.
The team conducted interviews with professionals and students about the problems they were facing with social and professional networking. A main theme that arose was that many of these people felt that they had wasted opportunities to connect with others because they were too afraid to insert themselves into conversations.
“I was at a café and I could hear people at the other table talking about venture capital,” said a student interviewed by the team. “I am an entrepreneur and wanted to learn more about VC but was not sure if these people would be interested in talking to me.”
Veroloop used the classic phrase of “being in the right place at the right time,” and developed an app that would do just that. The serendipity of many of these conversations is eliminated by the power of the application.
The Future
Veroloop is currently in beta and looking to build a vast network of users to garner feedback and testing. Veroloop requires the user to create a profile. To see the real utility of the application the team needs a user base. They have launched first at Babson, to get feedback from peers and other students and community members of the school. The next step will be to launch at neighboring campuses and coffee shops and to utilize Verloop at events.
The Babson Community
When Kumar was applying to business school, he only applied to Babson College. “For me it was always my first choice,” says Kumar. “Babson entrepreneurial ecosystem is so strong that it motivates you to push yourself and fulfill your destiny. It’s hard not to chase your dream when all your classmates are chasing theirs and you have your professors rooting for you.”
He credits the proactive feedback from the Babson community in helping him get Veroloop to where it is today. “It’s no coincidence that Babson is No. 1 for Entrepreneurship for 25 years in a row. I am also a part of Babson’s Launch Pad accelerator at Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, where we have worked on Veroloop over the last year and it has helped us to reach where we are at now.”
Download Verloop for iOS or Android and provide feedback to the team