Help & FAQs

Where Bengaluru's startup community meets. You go to events, meet people there and stay in touch, and book experts for an hour of their time, online or in person. Communities — incubators, accelerators, alumni associations, VCs, colleges, coworking spaces and more — run an interactive home for their own people on openhour. The idea underneath: nobody should miss a goal for lack of access to people, knowledge or mindset.

Anyone on openhour who has switched on their free intro: there is no separate kind of member, and the intro can be booked from their profile and in their communities without any review. Their other sessions open on openhour once openhour has approved them for Experts, and inside a community once that community's admins have approved them. Experts lists the people who asked to be listed there and were reviewed and approved by openhour. People who are not in Experts are not reviewed by us before you book them.

Joining is free, events are free for now, and help is free unless the person chooses a fee. openhour takes no commission. The details are under Payments, and for communities under Running a community.

Under Events — roundtables and workshops, some open to everyone and some to a community's members. They are shown for the place you have chosen in the header.

No. Registering for an event needs no phone number.

When someone with a confirmed place cancels, the person who has waited longest is moved onto the confirmed list straight away, in order. You are notified, but check the event page rather than waiting to hear from us. Your place in the queue and your status are shown there, and that is the record.

Nothing is charged for a waitlist place. Events are free for now.

After a session, its organiser can share a short note with up to 10 photos. Everyone who had a seat for that session gets it by email and in the app, whether they came or not, and it shows on the event page to anyone who can see the event. Photos are removed 45 days after the session; the note stays.

Organisers can also mark who came, once a session has started. That record is for the organiser.

Any member can host one. What happens when you publish depends on where it is:

On openhour. Your event is published at once, unless openhour has switched member events off for now. Recurring group sessions are sent to us for review unless you are approved for Experts.

In a community. An event for your own unit or group goes live at once, unless the community's admins have chosen to approve those too. An event for the whole community goes to its admins: choose Send for approval, and it goes live when one of them approves it. Admins publish directly in the community they run.

You are told which of two things happened. Published means it is live and listed. Sent for review means it is not listed yet: you will hear back within 48 hours, and you get a notification when it is approved. If something needs changing it comes back to you as a draft with a note saying what; edit it and publish again. While it waits you can still see it under your drafts, and you can withdraw it.

An event runs on one day, or on up to five days in a row. Recurring sessions can have up to 16 dates, all within three months of the first. Either way there is at most one session a day. Events and recurring sessions can be online, at a venue, or at a place you name.

Yes. When you create or edit an event, add up to five questions for people who want to join, each required or optional, and switch on Approve each registration manually if you want to choose who gets a place. People answer before they join, and on an approval event they send a request rather than taking a seat.

Their answers appear under each name in your list of registrants, next to Approve. You can reword a question later and keep the answers already given; removing a question removes its answers.

Either the community has switched events off, so nobody can create one there, or an admin has paused your membership. An event that went to the admins isn't refused: it waits in their Requests until one of them answers.

Not for a public community: register, and you become a member of it at the same time, in its main unit. A private community's events are for its members only.

A public community that openhour has allowed can show any of its events on openhour's Events, including events for one unit or group. Only its admins decide this; the organiser is told. While it's on openhour, anyone can register, and places are first come, first served. Private communities keep their events inside.

Yes. An openhour admin can unpublish an event, including one by someone in Experts. The organiser is told why, and so is anyone already registered; their registrations stay as they are. The organiser can edit the event and publish it again, and it then goes through review.

People and events on openhour are shown for the place you've chosen in the header. When a place has very few, the list widens to the city, then the state, then India, and says so above the results. Inside a community the place doesn't apply: you see all of its people and events, and can narrow by chapter.

It doesn't ask your browser. Until you choose a place, it starts from your saved Primary address, then the city on your profile, then the city your internet connection appears to be in, then a default city. The connection guess can be off on mobile data, so the place is always shown above the list with Change. Your browser is asked only if you press Use my current location.

Yes. Once your place is confirmed, the event page shows Who's going, and after the event it becomes People who went, for everyone who chose to be shown. Tap the chain to link with someone (only you see your links), or Book free intro on anyone who offers one. You can hide yourself from the list on the event page.

The event page lists people with a confirmed place who chose to be shown, under Who's going and, afterwards, People who went. It is shown to others who have a confirmed place too. A request still waiting for approval, or a waitlist place, does not put you on it. You can hide yourself from the list on the event page at any time.

Find them in Experts — people openhour has reviewed and listed — or open someone's profile link or their page in a community you share. Pick a session and a time, and send the request; they confirm it. A session has to be booked at least 24 hours ahead, and no more than 60 days ahead; the calendar only shows times inside that window.

In a public community, yes: book them from the community, at its price, and you become a member of it at the same time. In a private community, its experts are for members only; ask to join first. Inside a community you can book the people its admins approved, plus anyone's free intro.

Anyone can offer a free intro. Where they do, it is marked Free intro on their profile and card — it is a real session, not a sales call, and it is often the sensible place to start. You can have one free intro with each person. If they decline or cancel it, or don't reply in time, you can ask again; after that, book one of their other sessions. An intro is off while the person has no weekly hours.

No. You don't need a phone number to book a session or to join an event. People offering sessions need a verified number only if they charge or meet in person, and that number stays with the openhour team. It is never shown to you.

Some people have not published their weekly hours yet. On their profile you can ask to be told when they do, and you will get one notification when they open them.

Yes, so that one person can't take up all of someone's time. You can have one request waiting with each person at a time, and up to two upcoming sessions with the same person, paid or free. Once one has taken place, or you cancel one, you can book again. Sessions can be booked up to 60 days ahead, and you can have one free intro with each person. Booking other people is not affected.

A request that goes unanswered for 24 hours is cancelled automatically. You are not charged and nothing is held.

Yes. You can cancel a request that hasn't been answered at any time, and a confirmed session up to 24 hours before it starts, from your bookings. Closer than that, contact the person. Any payment is arranged between the two of you, so it is theirs to refund.

Yes. On a confirmed session that hasn't started, either of you can choose Suggest a new time, pick one of the expert's open times of the same length, and add a note. The other person sees it on the booking and chooses Accept new time or Keep original, or suggests another.

Until they answer, the original time stays booked and the new one is held for you. If nobody answers before either time comes round, the suggestion lapses. When it's accepted, the session moves, the calendar invite and video link are updated, and reminders are sent for the new time. One suggestion at a time per session.

Either of you can record it. From the time the session starts until 48 hours after it ends, open it in your bookings and choose They didn't show. The other person is told, and it can only be recorded once. Someone offering sessions who misses them is also reviewed by the openhour team.

You choose what happens when someone misses 2 sessions with you, under Sessions › Bookings › Missed sessions: continue as is (the default), one session at a time between you, or message me first, where the next request has to include a note to you. It works the same whether you book sessions or offer them.

For a 1-to-1 session: after it's completed, both of you can review each other. The reviews publish once you have both written, so neither of you can read the other's before writing your own. A review the other person never matches isn't published; only the openhour team can see it.

For an event or group session you attended: your review of the host goes live as soon as you submit it — there's no 30-day wait, since there's no single other review it needs to stay hidden from. It shows up in your own Reviews given list alongside your 1-to-1 session reviews.

An incubator, accelerator, alumni association, VC, college, coworking space, angel network or founder group that runs its own home on openhour: its members, events and sessions under its own name. Some are open to anyone, some ask you to apply, and some are private.

Public: tap Join this community and you're in, placed in its main unit (usually called General). Private: choose Ask to join, answer its questions, and an admin answers; or accept an invitation, which places you in the unit it was sent for. Booking an expert or registering for an event in a public community also makes you a member.

No. You can go to openhour's own events and book people without belonging to any community. Joining adds its people and events; it does not unlock the basics.

For now, up to 3 are open to you, on top of the ones you create yourself (up to 3, or 5 if you're listed in Experts). You can still join more, by joining, an invitation or a booking, but each one beyond your limit stays locked: you're a member, but its pages don't open for you until you leave another. Communities you run are never locked.

The Where are you? menu in the header lists only the communities you already belong to, and Browse, inside a community, only its chapters and groups you belong to. To join a new one, choose Find a community at the top of the same menu.

A chapter is where you are; a group is what you are part of. A community may be divided into chapters and units — a cohort or a city, then a track or an area within it — and you sit in one. Groups are separate: startup teams, committees, clubs, alumni, and you can be in any number of them.

An event scoped to a chapter reaches everyone in the units beneath it. An event scoped to a group reaches that group only.

It depends on the community. Most place members themselves — you will see which chapter you are in and cannot change it. Others let you ask, and an admin approves the request. If there is no way to ask, that community places people itself.

Some groups take requests: ask, and one of its admins approves you. Others are filled by their admins only. The group says which.

Each group is run by its own administrators, at most two of them, who approve requests and manage its members. They do not run the community itself.

Their own administrators, who set the joining rules, decide which members offer sessions there and appear in the community directory, and run their events.

In your Feed. The one in the main menu brings together, newest first:openhour's own announcements and events; articles, events and new services from people you have linked with; and everything from communities you belong to. Items from openhour and from people you've linked with stay for a month. Use All · openhour · Linked · Communities to see one source at a time. Inside a community, its own menu has a Feed with just that community's. You only see an announcement for a chapter or unit you are part of, and only those made since you joined.

Usually, from Communities in your dashboard. Each community decides: if its admins have switched leaving off, ask an admin to remove you. Leaving works like deleting an account. You confirm by the link we email you, you are hidden from the community straight away, and you leave 14 days later. Until then you can change your mind and stay. Anything still open there, such as an upcoming booking, has to be finished first, and the page tells you what.

Paused: you can still look around, but you can't book, be booked, register for events, create events or invite people in that community. Use Request review on the community's page; its admins are told and can lift the pause.

Removed: your upcoming bookings and event places in that community are cancelled, and any approval to offer sessions there ends. You can't rejoin on your own; you can ask to join, and an admin decides.

An admin asks and confirms it, and every member is told the date. After that date you can no longer access the community, unless an admin cancels the deletion first. In the meantime it is private and takes no new members. Your bookings and reviews are kept as records; the community's own pages, memberships and groups go.

Anyone with an openhour account. Name it, say in a few lines who it's for and what members do (at least 8 words), and it's live. It's free. You can create up to 3, or up to 5 if you're listed in Experts, and join up to 3 more.

Communities that reach 25 in their first month are the ones that keep meeting. Members who have joined count; you and your co-admins don't, and nor do requests you haven't approved yet. We'll tell you how you're doing on day 15 and day 25.If you're listed in Experts, we don't send these for communities you create.

Nothing changes: your community stays as it is and you can keep inviting people. 25 in 30 days is a goal, not a deadline; after 30 days we'll send you where it got to.

Communities created before 24 October 2026, and ones set up by the openhour team, aren't affected.

Chapters are the big parts of your community: cohorts, cities, campuses or funds. Units sit inside a chapter: tracks, locations, departments or sectors. Groups cut across everything: startup teams, committees, clubs or interest circles that people join. An event or a message can go to everyone, one chapter, one unit or one group. You name each level your way, and you can start without any. See examples for your kind of community.

Come to your events and see who else is coming, stay in touch with the people they meet, book time with each other to share what they know, and hear your news. All online or in person.

Your choice: public, where anyone joins in one tap and lands in your default unit, or private, where people ask with your own questions or come by invitation. The Membership card in your admin dashboard holds the rest: your default unit, whether members can invite (to their own unit), whether members' unit and group events publish directly, and whether members can ask to become experts. You can also choose whether members see who else is in each chapter or group.

Nothing in the pilot, for up to 2,048 members active in a month — people who opened it or joined in the last 30 days. openhour takes no commission on anything.

Yes. Add co-admins for the whole community from its admin dashboard (up to 3 admins), and give each group its own admins (up to two per group). Whoever creates a community is its first admin, its founder; being an admin isn't something you can request on someone else's community.

Every community keeps at least one admin, and only the founder (or openhour) can change the founder. If you demote or remove an admin who runs community events, their events pass to you. openhour's own admins can see your members but leave changes to you.

Incubators, accelerators, alumni associations, VCs and angel networks, colleges and E-cells, coworking spaces, corporate and government programmes, founder circles and event organisers. You get events with approvals and waitlists, members who book each other, chapters and groups, announcements and metrics. See For community owners.

Set up chapters and units, create and manage groups, answer requests to join, approve members to offer sessions in your community, approve members' community-wide events, pause or remove members, switch off members' sessions or your community directory, feature or verify a member within it, decide whether members can invite people and whether they can leave on their own, show events on openhour once allowed, send announcements, and see reports raised about anything inside your community. Everything waiting for you is in the Requests tab.

Two separate switches, both for your community only — they say nothing about openhour as a whole. Featured puts someone at the front of your community directory. Verified adds a mark next to their name inside your community, distinct from openhour's own Verified mark for people in Experts — the two are never the same claim, and both can show at once if someone has earned each separately.

Yes, from your admin dashboard. These are on top of openhour's own required questions, which apply to every applicant everywhere and are not yours to change — your own questions only apply to people applying through your community.

Members' events for the whole community always come to you first, in Requests: approve, or decline with a reason. Their unit and group events go live at once; switch off Members' unit and group events publish directly on the Membership card to approve those too. To stop events altogether, switch off Events in your community's features. Events already published stay up, and you always publish directly in your own community.

You and your co-admins. openhour's approval counts on openhour only, so inside your community people offer sessions (beyond their free intro) and appear in your directory once one of you approves them. Members ask from your community's page and the request lands in Requests; you can also use Add as expert on anyone in your members list. Your answer is yours alone and doesn't change openhour's. To stop members asking, switch off Members can ask to become experts on the Membership card; you can still add people yourself.

If your community is public and openhour has allowed it, yes: open an event and choose Show on openhour. That works for unit and group events too; while one is on openhour, anyone can register, people from outside join your main unit, and places are first come, first served. Only admins show or take off an event, and the organiser is told. Not allowed yet? Use Ask openhour to allow us under Publish Settings; we answer either way. Private communities keep their events inside.

Pausing stops them doing anything active in your community (booking, being booked, registering, creating events, inviting) while they can still look. They can ask you to review it; that shows in Requests under Paused, with Lift the pause. Removing cancels their upcoming bookings and event places in your community and ends their approval there; you're asked once before it happens. They can't rejoin by themselves, only through a request one of you approves.

It lands on your own community's admin dashboard, visible only to your community's admins — openhour does not see it, and you do not see reports raised about other communities either. You can mark it reviewed, dismiss it, or note that you acted on it.

A report about your community itself — not something within it, the community as a whole — always goes to openhour instead. That one is not yours to decide, by design.

Not yet. A community's cut can be set only once payments run through openhour; while people pay experts directly there is nothing to take it from. When it can, it comes out of the expert's payout and is never added to the price. openhour takes none.

Anyone can. In your dashboard, open Your services and switch on your free intro. Your checklist there, Booked from your profile, shows what a booking needs: a photo, a headline, your location, your public link, your weekly hours and a connected Google Calendar (it makes the Meet link and checks for clashes). Until it is all done the intro stays off; with no weekly hours it switches itself off. The free intro needs no review.

Once you are bookable, people can book you from your profile and in your communities, and reviews are on from your first session.

Other sessions go through Experts. Adding a session besides the intro, free or paid, asks to list you in Experts: it switches on List me in Experts and sends your profile to the openhour team for review. Those sessions open to bookings once you are approved; your intro stays bookable meanwhile.

Inside a community, its admins decide. openhour's approval counts on openhour only. On a community's page, Offer sessions in … asks its admins to approve you there; until then your free intro can still be booked there.

Add a session besides your free intro, or switch on List me in Experts under Your services. It asks only for what Experts needs that you haven't filled in: a short bio and 1–3 industries. Expertise tags, languages and LinkedIn are optional, for everyone. Your request then goes to the openhour team, who review it once; we email you either way. If it isn't approved your free intro can still be booked from your profile. After approval you can switch your Experts listing off and on again yourself. Featured and Verified on openhour are for people in Experts.

No. You set the rate for each session, and it can be free. Every session besides the free intro opens once you are approved for Experts. When it is paid, you and the person booking settle it directly and you keep all of it.

Setting a price above zero asks you to verify your mobile number first. It is part of verification and is kept by the openhour team as a backup if something goes wrong with a booking. It is never shown to the people who book you.

Each of these has to be true: List me in Experts switched on and approved by openhour; a short bio; at least one industry; at least one service on (the free intro is enough); some weekly hours; a connected Google Calendar; your location; a photo and headline; a profile name (your own link); and bookings not paused. If any service is paid or in person, a verified mobile number too.

Your dashboard names whichever is missing. If something the listing needs goes missing later, we email you that you are no longer listed and why, and you are back as soon as it is fixed.

A community can waive the phone requirement for its own members, so you may be bookable inside a community while still not listed in openhour Experts. None of the others has such an exception.

Its admins haven't approved you there yet: being in openhour Experts doesn't carry over. Use Offer sessions in … on the community's page (some communities add experts themselves, and then it says to ask an admin). You also need to be a member, not paused there, with member sessions switched on in that community.

Google may have ended the connection on its end — from the Google Account page, or automatically after some time if the app is still in early testing with Google. We detect this and disconnect it on our side too, rather than leave a dead connection that looks live.

Reconnecting from your dashboard takes a minute and does not affect past bookings.

The time on Experts cards is refreshed every 15 minutes and works from your weekly hours, your bookings and the times you have blocked. It does not look at your Google Calendar, so the booking page, which does, is always the exact view.

An average rating only shows once someone has completed 5 sessions. Below that a single review would look identical to a proven track record, so we show “New” instead — it is not a warning, most people start there.

Yes — up to three screening questions, set in your dashboard under Services. A required one must be answered before the booking can be made.

Yes, where 1:1 series are switched on. Under Services in your dashboard, choose Add recurring 1:1 sessions: a fixed set of dates and times you choose, for a programme rather than a single booking. It is listed like an event with one place, and the person who takes it has every session in the set. It can have up to 16 dates within three months, one a day, online or in person. To carry on after that, create a new set once it ends. Its times are taken out of your bookable hours, so nobody can book a single session over them. If you don't see it, 1:1 series are switched off on openhour or in that community for now.

Yes. When you sign up to offer sessions you get your own invite link. Anyone who signs up with it appears on your profile as recommended by you.

Yes, in two ways. Pause bookings stops new requests for everything you offer. Pause a service takes just that one off your profile and keeps the rest bookable; a paused service still counts towards your 10. Either way, sessions already booked go ahead, and your profile, history and reviews stay as they are.

Money does not pass through openhour. If a session is paid, you and the person offering it arrange it directly, by whatever means you both prefer.

The person offering the session can mark it as paid for their own records. That note carries no amount and no payment details — it is not a receipt.

openhour doesn't process, collect or hold payments and takes no commission, so it isn't responsible for payments between you. Agree the amount and how you'll pay before the session.

We never received the money, so we cannot send it back. But there is a process, and it is not "ask and hope".

For a 1-to-1 session: message the person through your booking confirmation and ask them to cancel it. If they do not respond, write to us and we will decide.

For an event: events are free for now, so there is nothing to pay and nothing to refund. Paid tickets are not available yet.

If the person offering it cancels a paid session, they should refund you in full. The money was paid to them, not to openhour, so the refund comes from them; openhour doesn't hold or return payments.

Nothing, and this is a permanent commitment — openhour does not take a commission from any booking, ever. There is no fee to join, to be listed, or to book either.

A community may one day take its own share of sessions booked through it. If it does, that share comes out of the payout to the person offering the session. It is never added to the price you pay. A community can only set one once payments run through openhour, which they do not yet.

With Google, or with an email and password. Both reach the same account as long as the email matches. Signing in with Google also asks for access to your Google Calendar, so your busy times are respected and the events you have a place at are added to it. You can sign in without granting it.

Under My profile. Your name appears on your profile and on every booking.

Your LinkedIn, X, Instagram, YouTube and website go under How people find you on the same page. That is the one place for them, for everyone.

It checks when you're busy, so nobody is offered a time you can't make; it only sees that an hour is taken, not what's in it. Events you have a confirmed place at are added to your calendar and kept up to date if the time changes or you leave. Sessions you book arrive as an invitation from the person you booked, with the meeting link. If you offer sessions, each confirmed booking is added to your calendar with a Google Meet link.

You can disconnect it any time from your dashboard. openhour then removes the upcoming events it added and gives the access back to Google, so it no longer appears in your Google account's connected apps.

About your own bookings and events, yes — reminders, a cancellation, a payment recorded or refunded, a nudge to leave a review once a session you were part of is completed, a recap from an event you had a seat at, announcements from communities you belong to, and, for an event you organise, what happens after you publish it: approval, a request for changes, or a takedown. If you offer sessions, also the answer to your request to be listed in Experts and a note if you stop being listed. If you run a community, also how it is doing in its first 30 days. Those are part of the service and you get them because you use it.

Anything else only if you ticked the box. It is not ticked for you, it is not required to use openhour, and you can untick it at any time in your profile, or with Unsubscribe at the foot of any update email — one click, no sign-in.

It moved inside More (previously labelled Learn) alongside Incubators, Accelerators & VCs, Articles and Templates — one place for everything that isn't a core action like booking, events or communities.

Yes — there's a Report link on every profile, community and group. Say what happened and it's sent to whoever can actually act on it: within a community, that community's own admins; anything about a community itself, or otherwise about openhour as a whole, goes to the openhour team directly. Nobody outside those people sees what you reported.

Bios, descriptions and reviews are checked automatically for abusive or offensive language before they save. If something's flagged, you'll see exactly which word or phrase triggered it, so you can fix that one part rather than guess at the whole thing. This is an automated check on wording, not a person reading your writing and judging it — it can occasionally flag something harmless that happens to match, and you're welcome to write to support if that happens.

Yes. Go to My profile → Delete account. You confirm by the link we email you, and your account is deleted after a 14-day grace period. Signing in before then and choosing to keep your account cancels it. You can’t delete while you have upcoming bookings, live events you created, or a community you alone administer — the page lists what to finish first. Your links, in both directions, and your answers to event questions are deleted with it. Some records survive, such as those we are required to keep for tax or by a legal order, and a review you wrote stays without your name on it because removing it would change somebody else’s rating. The Privacy Policy sets out exactly what and for how long. You can also write to [email protected].