Excited to start a postgraduate degree after a good 17-year break. All I wanted was to connect with people starting the journey with me, someone in the middle of theirs, or an alumnus as a mentor. However, there was no way for me to find them. At least not at the start. Later, in a few chat groups and alumni forums, all I could hear was crickets! Only to find out later that there were people living two streets away from me who would have been my friends to start and end their postgraduate degrees, team up on assignments and attend the graduation ceremony together.

As we were crushing the units (pun intended). Between lectures and assignment deadlines, a few of us kept trying to line up a social drinks get-together for like-minded others in the class and outside the class with people in other units. It sounds like the simplest plan in the world, but it never was. One message turned into forty; someone was always already on their way home, and by the time everyone had replied, the moment had passed. Most of the time, we would be engaging the same set of people with not much traction, while there were others who were struggling to do the same in their silo units.

Then one afternoon, sitting at a local bar with a couple of friends, we got talking and realised how absurd it was. We were all in the same city, same University, same building and at the same time, and we still needed a group chat to get there? Why was it so hard to connect with people we already knew, when we were right next to each other?

We all felt there had to be a better way than shouting into yet another group chat that nobody answers.

While we were inching towards the end of our postgraduate journey and preparing for our graduation ceremony, the idea stayed with me well after the degree ended. Post-COVID hybrid working arrangements scattered colleagues across homes and offices, and the small, quick coffee catch-up, unplanned moments that used to happen on their own in corridors, on campuses and on city streets became rarer than ever. The problem hadn't gone away. It had grown in the post-COVID hybrid working era, when you didn't know who else was in the building or in the city while you were sitting at your desk looking outside, wondering and reminiscing about the good old days of in-person team engagement and cohesiveness.

After months of turning it over in my head, I finally started tinkering in my free time. My coding skills were rusty since I wrote my last line of code more than 12 years ago. So, with some time in hand, lot of patience and a little AI powered engineering, slowly a basic MVP took shape. It was built around one simple idea: let people tell nearby friends or colleagues that they're free for a quick, low-commitment catch-up, look for nearby venues to meet and create an event to schedule the meet. All in one place!

After months of tinkering and refinement. 1Drink.IO is now live and can be accessed from more than 175 countries or regions across the globe through Google Android and Apple iOS apps, or Register/Sign In on an Apple Mac or Microsoft Windows tablet/laptop/desktop, all synced in real time for a seamless user experience no matter how you choose to access the 1Drink platform.