Why young Indians are paying to meet strangers

Aziz walked into a restaurant in Mumbai unsure of what was on the menu — or who he’d be dining with. Fresh off a breakup and weighed down by exams, he had signed up for a dinner with five strangers through

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, a Paris-based company curating meetups in cities across India and abroad, just to try something unfamiliar.
That evening, Yukti, Parth, and Atit joined him — strangers from different backgrounds, each drawn by the same desire for a “real, meaningful connection.” Over two hours, their conversation flowed from the polite “What brings you here?” to tales of childhood mischief, travel disasters, and one near-kidnapping. “It felt less like meeting strangers and more like rediscovering the joy of simply being human, offline,” they agreed.