Every student at least once had difficulties getting along with roommates and Brooklyn-based Ajay Yadav was not an exception. He might have been one of the people who had one of the worst experiences. Coming back to New York after three months of break, he found his empty apartment, all his belongings gone, and his deposit taken away.
After hearing from friends that they were also having similar problems, he came up with an idea, “I thought what if I can help them find a roommate with whom they might get along.” Developing his idea, he thought about “Creating something that you can communicate through a platform. We had almost 200 people signing up for the idea. That was cool. We recently launched a very basic version of the iPhone app, and we have almost 1500 people now.”
People find out about Roomi through Tech Ranch rankings in the app store and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Yadav explains, “If you search for a roommate, the ranking number is second, and if you search for plural roommates, its number is seven. Usually, I try to reach out to people. Somehow if they like it, they tell their friends. It just keeps moving on, I guess.”
He explained how his technology worked, “To build this, you use this engine that brings information from Facebook and we try to match it. Basically, it’s based on the likes you have and on the interactions you have on Facebook. And based on what we ask you… we just try to match these profiles.”
Social media in this case is used not for marketing purposes but just for a platform. In order to develop his company, he says that he uses different small startups. “One of them, Fire Bases, is an amazing company that goes on Amazon. They help you to communicate in real-time. I am trying to use other startups with mine because they are amazing. We’re disruptive because instead of using big companies, we’re taking a different approach.”
