Pluto is a social discovery app that nudges urban Indians off their phones and into real local experiences, matching people through shared activities, not profiles.
Pluto has an unusual orbit. It drifts in and out of the solar system, never quite fitting the pattern of everything else. For an app about people who want real connection but aren't sure how to start, that felt exactly right.
The client suggested the tagline. I took the cosmic theme and built the whole visual world around it: deep blues, playful gradients, a dark interface that feels like looking up at a night sky. The social graph became an orbit system with the user at the center, surrounded by the people and places that actually matter to them.
Not a dating app. Not a social network. A curated engine that surfaces real local venues and the people who want to be there, at the same time, in the same city.
Pluto launched as a closed pilot in Gurgaon and Delhi. Early signals before any paid acquisition.
At 10.5% DAU/MAU on a social activity app, Pluto is already at the lower bound of what's considered healthy for a daily habit product, without any growth investment yet.
I joined as the sole designer from early product definition through to the live launch. Responsible for every screen, the product strategy, and the App Store resubmission.
The product started as VaibeSync, a concept for connecting people through vibe-matching. Over several months of research, testing, and iteration, it became Pluto. These are the actual notebooks.
The structural diagnosis: the one thing that made Pluto genuinely different (real venue data) was buried 4 taps deep. The thing that looked like every dating app was the home screen.
The complete journey from discovering a venue to having that experience logged as a permanent part of the user's orbit.
Home opens on place, be it solo or with a person: you get place, price, and then profiles of people.
