I went on a blind date with 5 people…

…And liked it! Mumbai now has a new app that sets strangers up on dinner dates where you can make new friends. mid-day went on its very first outing in India

You know those nerves before a blind date? The clenched tummy and anxious internal monologue, “What if they’re weird? What if they think I’m weird? What will we talk about?” 

Now what if we told you we signed up for a blind date with five people? No, this is not a Draupadi and paanch Pandav situation, this was to be a date to help one make new friends. 

Last week, we’d chanced upon an Instagram ad for a new app, TimeLeft, which seeks to fight “big-city loneliness” by connecting strangers over dinner every week. The hope is that you connect and find new friends or, who knows, even romance. It’s not that we lack friends; we’re lucky to have a tight-knit circle of friends, most of whom live in the same city, and we’ve all been friends for over a decade. But maybe that’s the problem—we couldn’t remember the last time we’d made a new friend outside of work. 

TimeLeft founder Maxime Barbier envisioned the app as a way to get people off their phones and out in the world, making real connections. Ironically, it is doomscrolling that has brought us to his app, which has just launched in India, starting with Mumbai and Bengaluru. The app is being used across 62 other countries, so it clearly works.

We register on Monday and learn that our dinner on Wednesday night is to be the very first TimeLeft session in the country. It’s only on the morning of the session that we get a message informing us our dinner date is to take place in Colaba, at a restaurant we’ve never heard of (Flavours, located at the Electric House). We get there, and the sinking feeling in our gut intensifies. There’s no one from the app to guide us through this new experience. 

Instead, we enter and tell the maitre’d to lead us to the “TimeLeft table”. Then we discover the restaurant has no bar. How are we going to make conversation without alcohol as a social lubricant? 

My worry turns out to be ill-founded. Almost instantly, the group seems to hit it off, and conversation bounces from dating to work to travel to why Bandra’s been completely dug up.  

First, we meet “Fellow Introvert”, a public relations executive. As the others start trickling in, we meet Benoit, a French software developer passing through India; Minoti, a business executive at an MNC; and “Finance Bro”. The sixth person has flaked on us.

I soon realise that this is nothing like meeting people on a dating app or at a conference. Everyone is here because they have chosen to be, so they’re already open to getting to know each other. And, we’re all from different walks of life, so there’s plenty to discover throughout the evening. For instance, the table is immediately guffawing over the revelation that Benoit (Call me Ben, B-E-N, he says) is working on a “loyalty test” app to catch philandering girlfriends or boyfriends in 
a honey-trap and see if they succumb to temptation.

Talk then turns to dating, and Ben tells us about an app he’s been using in India to find dates for threesomes.

Minoti reveals she’s engaged—to our congratulations—and adds, “I signed up for TimeLeft because it’s the only app designed for making friends not dating. I just wanted to meet new people outside of work and my own circle.” We all concur, it’s nice to be able to meet new people without expectations.

Not all of it is pleasant, though. Barely 15 minutes into the interaction, while we’re talking about a Women’s Day story Sunday mid-day did last week, highlighting issues women face while juggling career, family and hobbies, Finance Bro points to us and says, “I bet your story said men are the problem! You seem like someone who hates men.”

A common gripe we all had was the restaurant location; Bandra or Andheri would have been better for all of us. And after all that travel, it was a bit disappointing to find a limited menu and no booze. Still, we were pleasantly surprised to realise that we didn’t miss alcohol; conversation was flowing freely on its own. We didn’t even need the conversation starter game offered by the app. Idle curiosity did prompt us to check out the Q&A game, although when we saw the kind of questions included—If you were an animal, what kind would you be?—we promptly decided we were better off on our own. 

And that’s the beauty of TimeLeft. If this were on DMs, the conversation could have petered out for any number of reasons—awkward silences, boring profile pictures or other distractions. Here, each of us made a conscious decision to get to know each other over the span of a meal.

The true test, of course, is whether we keep in touch afterwards. Nearly all of us exchanged phone numbers and Instagram handles before parting ways, and we even have plans to meet again in a couple of weeks. Here’s to new friends!  

How to register

Participants can subscribe to the app for a month (Rs 1,099) up to six months (Rs 583 per month). This makes them eligible to attend a dinner every Wednesday. 
Food and beverage expenses are separate and you can select a price range you’re comfortable.   

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