Help & FAQs

A network of people helping people, starting with Bengaluru's startup community. Members meet at events, book each other's time online or in person, share what they know, and join communities. The idea underneath: nobody should miss a goal for lack of access to people, knowledge or mindset.

A member who applied and was vetted. Experts are not a separate product: they are members with a verified track record. Many help when they have time and do not sell services; others set a fee.

Joining is free, and help is free unless the person chooses a fee. openhour takes no commission. The details are under Payments.

Find them under Find an expert, pick a service and a time, and send the request. The expert confirms it. A session has to be booked at least 24 hours ahead.

Some experts 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 an expert's time. You can have one request waiting with an expert at a time, and up to two upcoming sessions with the same expert. Once one has taken place, or you cancel one, you can book again. Booking other experts is not affected.

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

Some experts offer a free intro. Where they do, it is marked on their profile — it is a real session, not a sales call, and it is often the sensible place to start.

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

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, or 30 days after the session, whichever comes first — so neither of you can read the other's before writing your own.

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.

Anyone can apply. There is no invitation and no waiting list — how it works. Applications are reviewed before anyone is listed.

Your profile, what you offer and your rate, and your weekly hours. Hours are online only at this stage and are in place the moment you are approved. A free intro session is switched on by default, and you can turn it off in your dashboard at any time.

No. You set the rate for each service, and it can be free. When it is paid, you and the person booking settle it directly and you keep all of it.

Five things have to be true, and missing any one keeps you out of the directory entirely: at least one service, some availability, a connected Google Calendar, a verified mobile number, and at least one industry set on your profile.

Your dashboard names whichever is missing.

A community can waive the phone requirement for its own experts, so you may be bookable inside a community while still not listed on the main directory. The industry requirement has no such exception — it applies everywhere, for every expert.

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 directory 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 expert's average rating only shows once they have 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 experts 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, 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 expert arrange it directly, by whatever means you both prefer.

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

When openhour does start handling payments, money will be released to the expert 15 days after each session. Today nothing is held, because nothing passes through us.

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 expert 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 expert cancels a paid session, you are refunded in full. That is not at their discretion and not at ours.

Nothing, and this is a permanent commitment — openhour does not take a commission from any booking, ever. There is no fee to join, to list, 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 expert's payout. 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.

Under Events — roundtables and workshops, some open to everyone and some to a community's members.

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

On openhour. If you are an approved expert, your event is published at once. Anyone else's event is sent to us for review first.

In a community. Members publish for their own unit or group, and it goes live at once. A community's admins can switch that off, and then only they can publish there. 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.

That community's admins have turned off member events, so only they can publish there. Ask an admin to publish it, or to switch member events back on.

Yes. An openhour admin can unpublish an event, including an expert's. 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.

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.

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.

A space with its own members, events and bookings under its own name — an accelerator, incubator, angel network, founder group or coworking space. Some are open, some ask you to apply.

No. You can book experts and attend platform events without belonging to any community. Joining adds its people and events; it does not unlock the basics.

Approved experts can start a community. For now a person can start up to 3 and join up to 3 more. A free community holds up to 2,048 monthly active members, meaning people who opened it or joined in the last 30 days.

A chapter is where you are; a group is what you are interested in. A community may be divided into chapters and units — a city, then an area within it — and you sit in one. Groups are separate: cohorts, mentors, 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.

Some groups you can join directly. Others ask an admin to approve you first — the group says which before you ask.

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.

It depends on the community. Most place members themselves — you will see which chapter you are in and cannot change it. Some let you ask and approve the request, and some let you join directly. If there is no Join control, that community places people itself.

Their own administrators, who set the joining rules, publish their experts and run their events.

In your Feed. The one in the main menu brings together announcements from openhour and every community you belong to, newest first. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Experts 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 experts 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.

Whoever starts a community — an approved expert, or an openhour admin setting one up for someone — is its first admin. After that, an existing admin can add more, from the community's own admin dashboard. It is not something you can request or unlock on someone else's community.

Set up chapters and units, create and manage groups, review and decide applications to your community, feature or verify a member within it, decide whether members can publish events there and whether they can leave on their own, send announcements, and see reports raised about anything inside your community.

Two separate switches, both scoped to your community only — they say nothing about the platform as a whole. Featured puts someone at the front of your community's own expert list. Verified adds a mark next to their name inside your community, distinct from openhour's own platform-level verified mark — the two are never the same claim, and both can show at once if an expert 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.

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.

Yes. In your community's features there is a Members can publish events switch, on by default. Switch it off and only admins can create and publish events in your community. Events members already published stay up. You always publish directly in your own community.

Not yet. A community's cut can only be set once payments run through openhour; while people pay experts directly there is nothing to take it from. When it is available, it comes out of the expert's payout rather than being added to the price, and openhour's own share stays at zero.

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

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. Those are part of the service and you get them because you made a booking.

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.

With Google, LinkedIn, or an email and password. They all reach the same account as long as the email matches.

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 platform-level, goes to openhour 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. 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 privacy@openhour.co.