Your friends may be just a WhatsApp message away. Getting one to actually show up for a movie is another matter. In July, software developer Seshu Raju, 29, found a workaround. He rented one for Rs 120 an hour. For three hours, Laxman was his movie buddy. They watched a Telugu film, shared snacks, and then parted ways.For Raju, who had recently moved from Kurnool to Hyderabad, where conversations at work and in his housing society rarely went beyond ‘hi’ and ‘bye’, it was money well spent.“My friends are no longer my type. They state their opinions or make fun, but are never there to help! Or they are addicted to PUBG even on weekends, with no time for calls. I just want someone I can meet sometimes,” says Raju, whose prayers were answered while doomscrolling on Instagram, where he found DosthAdda, which lists friends it describes as ‘verified’, charging anywhere from Re 1 to Rs 1,000 an hour. The ‘going rate’ is whatever each companion thinks their company is worth.Raju bought tickets for a mythological drama at AMB Cinemas in Sarath City Mall and travelled 10 km to pick up Laxman, 25, an IT intern. “I spent Rs 1,000 and had a really good time. This is the third friend I booked on the platform,” he says.In increasingly atomised cities, where people move for jobs, work remotely and struggle to build social circles, paid friendship is becoming another service on demand.Last month, advertisements offering Garba partners for Rs 500 to Rs 6,500 surfaced online. Services ranged from a basic two-hour dance companion for Rs 500 to an all-night ‘premium’ package that included matching outfits, dance tutorials, food dates and social media reels, prompting police warnings over possible fraud.But beyond these dubious offers is a marketplace of people willing to pay, or be paid, for company. Whether you need someone to tag along to a concert, brave a family function, go cafe-hopping, shopping, or simply listen over coffee, there’s someone willing to oblige, for a fee.Platforms insist these arrangements are strictly platonic, with daytime meetings in public places. Rates typically range from Rs 800 to Rs 1,500 an hour, with platforms taking a cut. Target customers are often working professionals and students living away from home, with hundreds of contacts on their phones but nobody free to actually show up.Some founders stumbled upon the idea after a breakup or a move to a new city, when they discovered that making friends as an adult wasn’t quite as easy as adding someone on social media. Others saw money to be made in the ‘loneliness economy’.
Friendship on demand
At Bengaluru-based Kumpanio, founder Deep Shahot, 33, says the requests have varied from a 63-year-old woman wanting someone to spend her birthday with while her daughter was in Australia to a single mother needing a male companion to attend a wedding, and a CEO booking a companion for an entire day after falling out with his co-founder.Shahot knows a thing or two about wanting company. After losing his partner to Covid, he withdrew from relationships.“I was depressed, and was done with relationships, so I took the monk route,” he says.He spent three years at Matho monastery in Ladakh before returning to coding in Chandigarh, only to find himself lonely again. The website he subsequently built drew a handful of people willing to pay for a plus-one.Launched in Feb 2025, Kumpanio now has 500 registered companions and gets around 25 enquiries a day.“It’s not even about the friendship. It’s about the availability, which is becoming rare,” he claims.
Friends with benefits
Most cite inspiration from Japan’s thriving human-renting industry, where you can hire everyone from a do-nothing companion who will happily sit in silence to stand-in wedding guests, handsome weeping companions, professional apologisers and proxy job-quitters.Pune-based Shubhankar Rakesh Dalvi stumbled upon Japan’s Rent-Kano, a non-sexual companionship service, after a frustrating run of scams and casual propositions on dating apps. In December, he started his own venture, Hire-a-Friend.“Here, companionship is a professional role much like a plumber or an electrician. There is no sentiment attached to it,” he says.Customers foot the bill for the companion’s time, travel and food. But keeping the business platonic is proving harder than he expected.“So many times we get enquiries for sexual services. That is the biggest problem we face. I just say that you are on the wrong platform, and goodbye.”For his “market research”, Dalvi surveyed 500 people, including students at Pune’s Symbiosis and MIT, who put the price of accompanying a stranger for coffee anywhere between Rs 200 and Rs 3,000 an hour.“So I took the average of this range,” he says.Not everyone needs a start-up to rent out their friendship. On weekdays, Shobhit, 27, works as a lead manager at Amazon. On weekends, the Ghaziabad resident rents himself out for Rs 300 an hour.He advertises on LinkedIn and Reddit, but draws the line at Instagram.“Instagram mein thoda cheap lagta hai (It looks a little cheap to advertise on Instagram),” he says.After a slow start in March, he now claims around six bookings a week and earnings of about Rs 30,000.But loneliness is hardly the only reason people are hiring companions. Requests can vary wildly, and sometimes they sound more like casting calls.A married man in Gurugram, whose wife had little interest in football, hired Shobhit to watch a match. A girl once wanted him to stand outside her coaching centre holding a bouquet.“She said, ‘I will come there for five seconds and collect it from you.’ Maybe she only wanted to make a guy jealous,” says Shobhit.Another woman booked him for four hours and confided in him about domestic violence and her inability to have children.“We really hit it off. She initiated a round of beers too, but when she invited me over to her place, I drew a line.”Then there was the Class 11 boy who hired Shobhit to play his uncle while collecting exam papers from school.“I had to scold him, ‘Itne kam marks kaise aaye (How did you get such low grades)? I will go tell chachi!’” says Shobhit, who even knocked Rs 100 off the bill because it was a small favour for a neighbourhood boy.Recently, he was hired to bulk up a gurdwara wedding. A bridegroom hired Shobhit to rustle up six couples to fill out the guest list.“It was a love marriage. The brief was to make the gathering look large and convince the girl’s side. The couples were booked for three hours. We billed them Rs 4,500. We dressed up, hung around, ate nice food and came back,” he says.
Perils of paid company
When companionship comes with a price tag, Mumbai-based cyberpsychologist Nirali Bhatia says it needs strong identity and age verification, privacy safeguards and clear rules around physical contact.“Otherwise, such platforms could become another hub for exploitation, fraud, stalking and, of course, fake accounts,” she says.But the risks aren’t merely digital. Paid companionship can change how people understand relationships themselves.“What if one person develops an emotional attachment while the other sees it as their job? That can lead to disappointments, harassment, and unhealthy attachments,” warns Bhatia.Shahot says Kumpanio carries out KYC, Aadhaar verification and background checks for customers and companions, and puts recruits through video training. The rules are clear.“No drinking, no visits to customers’ homes, and no demanding taxi fares, meals or gifts. Not every company has these rules, though,” he admits.His platform also claims to have a 24×7 helpline and SOS feature. Of course, a background check can only tell you so much about whether two people will get along.Raju, for one, seems to have got a bit more than his three hours at the movies. He and Laxman have kept in touch since.“We still meet and greet on festive days,” he says. “On Instagram, of course.”
