Built by people who called every shop themselves
Our Story
The beginning
Two of us spent a month calling shops in Dadar to settle an argument: how many local businesses are actually reachable online? Most were not. The first version of NearbyReview was a spreadsheet of 400 of them.
First verified listing
A tailoring shop off Senapati Bapat Marg became the first business we called, placed and published. The same three checks — phone, address, a person on the other end — still gate every listing today.
Reviews, and the rules around them
One account, one review per business. We wrote the content policy before we needed it, and set the rating to be computed by the database so nobody on staff could ever type one in.
The owner console
Owners kept asking who had enquired. We gave them a lead inbox, public replies to reviews and the ability to claim a listing — free, because a listing nobody manages is a listing nobody trusts.
Beyond Mumbai
Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad opened with a launch manager each, listing and verifying the first thousand businesses in the city by hand before the pages went live.
Tools that run the day
The point of sale and the quotation maker shipped: the till sells what the microsite shows, stock comes off the same catalogue, and a quote is a link the customer can accept. Still free.
Every listing becomes a website
Microsites gave each business its own themed pages, and custom domains let owners point a domain they bought at the listing they already maintain.
Search that understands a photograph
Image search, offers, guides written to a published editorial policy, and a catalogue that answers its own counts — no number on this site is stored by hand.
11 businesses, 33 reviews and 1 city live — counted by the catalogue as you read this.
Our Values
NearbyReview promises to be the most useful thing to happen to a business with no website.
Verified before visible. A listing goes live only after the phone number and address check out. Owners who want the badge send documents too, and a person reads them.
Reviews from people who went. One account, one review per business, and we never delete a review because the owner asked. Owners reply in public; we moderate in public.
Tools that stay free. The listing, the POS, the quotation maker and the lead inbox cost nothing. Paid plans buy placement and a badge, never access to your own data.
Our Brand & Backing
One brand, one catalogue
- NearbyReview Technologies Pvt. Ltd. runs all of it.
- The directory, the owner console and the microsites read one catalogue in Postgres.
- There is no second dataset sold to anyone else.
Paid plans, not paid facts
Revenue comes from owners who buy a verification badge and sponsored placement. Placement is labelled Ad and never pushes an organic result down; a badge is documents a person read, not a rating.
Independent, and small on purpose
We are funded by that revenue and a single seed round. Nobody outside the company can pay to change a rating, remove a review, or see an owner's leads.
Leadership
Small, in Mumbai, and on the support inbox. Engineers, designers and the people who verify listings sit together, and everyone talks to owners each month — that is where most of the roadmap comes from.
Ananya Rao
Vikram Shetty
Meera Iyer
Rohit Deshmukh
Sana Qureshi
Karthik Menon
Live in Mumbai today, and every business on this map was called before it went up.
11 businesses and 33 reviews, counted by the catalogue as you read this.
About NearbyReview, in short.
Visit the help centreAn India-focused local business directory. Consumers search verified businesses by city and category, read reviews from people who visited, and enquire straight from the listing. Owners claim their listing free and get a lead inbox, a point of sale, an inventory list and a quotation maker with it.
Every submission starts pending and unclaimed. Someone on the team calls the number and places the address before it can appear in search or on a city page. Owners who want the badge send documents too, and a person reads them — verification is never automatic and never bought.
No. The listing, the microsite, the lead inbox, the till and the quotation maker are free and stay free. Paid plans buy a verification badge and sponsored placement, which is always labelled Ad. Nothing behind a plan is your own data.
Not by asking. A review comes down only when it breaks the content policy — it is fake, it is abusive, or it is about the wrong business — and the decision is logged with who made it and why. Owners can reply in public to anything.
The catalogue itself. Listing counts come from a view, ratings from a trigger over the reviews on record. If a figure cannot be derived from rows, the page shows an empty state instead of a plausible-looking number.