Look up this Little Black Book before painting the town red

The picture of a bowl of hot creamy soup on a chilly winter day draws me in. Next to it is a picture of a woman wrapped in layers of thick wool. I warm up to the look of Little Black Book instantly. December in Delhi can be bitterly cold and I need some comforting thoughts on my good old city.

Three years ago, its founder Suchita Salwan was searching for something like this. “I was working with the BBC. As a young, working adult, with a decent pay check, I found it extremely difficult to stay in the know of what was happening in my city,” Suchita tells Tech in Asia.

She wanted someone to tell her exactly what to do and listings sites were not the answer. They can be cumbersome. “And so boring,” she says.

Now ‘boring’ is one thing that Little Black Book (LBB) is not. Started by Suchita in 2012, the online city and lifestyle guide curates from other publishers and tastemakers, and creates over 600 unique listings every month. The website gets 500,000 monthly unique visits.

To those in Delhi, Gurgaon, and now also Bangalore, LBB serves information – on restaurants, cafes, stores, online shops, fitness classes, communities, and more – on a platter.

A well-designed, topical platter

Colorful pictures of food that focus on Christmas, shots of comfy winter shoes, neat listings of events around town, a smart campus section useful for students, latest apps… LBB packs it all in.

What I really love, though, is its focus on not just shiny new places but also old, crowded, and historical ones. These are full of legend, pull in the common man, and can leave a visitor with a lingering taste of Delhi. The website recreates their romance.

“For me, LBB was a way to document all that I enjoyed discovering in my city, and hoping that through all the things I found, I could inspire people to discover Delhi,” Suchita says.

In June this year, they got seed investment of US$150,000 from a group of angel investors, including Google India’s Rajan Anandan and MakeMyTrip co-founder Sachin Bhatia.

Suchita says there’s a lot going on in India. “There’s a huge audience of 18 to 35-year-olds waiting to find what to do after a day at work, a weekend out with family, and during the course of their day,” Suchita says.

Doing the groundwork

Jump in revenue

The road ahead