Headout Inc., ^[1] is an on-demand mobile concierge service that helps travellers and natives to discover and book tours, local experiences and various additional activities on the go.

It has over 4000 listings and is currently operational in 8 U.S cities including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, Miami and Hawaii.

In March 2016, Headout launched operations in the Middle East servicing Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Tourlandish, a Bangalore-based startup company, was founded in May 2013, by a group of three close friends, Varun Khona, Vikram Jeet Singh and Suren Sultania. The idea to establish Tourlandish first surfaced throughout a trip to Europe, as a consequence of a frustrating online experience involving the discovery and booking of local activities and various things to do. The founders had to put in their own funds to support and finance the venture. Unfortunately, Tourlandish didn't manage to succeed as expected. ^[2]

In 2014, Headout was conceptualised by the same team consisting of Varun Khona, Suren Sultania and Vikram Jeet Singh.

It was aimed at empowering travellers and locals who were looking to book tours, activities, concerts, and cultural experiences on the go.

The lack of organised services that allowed patrons to be spontaneous was the reason Headout was started in New York and eventually moved their base to the Silicon Valley in September 2014.

After its inauguration in New York City, the app has now expanded to 10 cities.

The company has seen a substantial growth after their July 2014 launch in New York, from serving a few hundred guests per month to thousands from over 65 countries.

In 2016, Headout launched its services in London and Paris with plans of growing in the European market.

Headout targets to expand its services in 30 cities by the end of 2017.

Headout is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

The company additionally has offices in Bangalore, which mainly includes the engineering and operations teams, and Dubai, which comprises its marketing, sales and business development teams.

After about 8 months from the date of inception, Headout announced in the month of April 2015, that it had successfully raised a round of seed funding. The exact figure was estimated at around $1.8 million. ^{[3] [4]} Funded by U.S based Version One Ventures, 500 Startups, ^[5] Nexus Venture Partners, and Arena Ventures. The round additionally saw participation from AngelList’s members such as, Maiden Lane Ventures, Funders Club, Haystack Fund, Ludlow Ventures, DreamIt Ventures and additional angels including Rick Marini (advisor to Facebook), Fabrice Grinda (OLX), Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal) and Neeraj Arora (WhatsApp) invested in Headout.

In March 2016, Headout successfully raised $10.4 million in equity financing from the Series A funding round. ^{[6] [7]}

According to CEO Varun Khona, the mission of Headout is to become the go-to app for travellers as soon as they land in a new city.

Aiding in discovery of cultural activities and attractions, which means the locals in these cities, will additionally be able to benefit from this.

The funds raised is said to fuel this ambitious idea and to accelerate sustainable growth.

Headout is an interesting case of Indian entrepreneurs setting up a global company and according to the founders, this has been plausible because of the experiences gained while travelling and living in the U.S.

Headout curates a list of vendors who provide activities, tours, and additional experiences.

They are on-boarded for an initial trial period throughout which the quality, availability, and user interest is tested.

Post this vetting process a vendor is on-boarded formally and is listed as a verified service provider.

The approved service providers are then given access to their own standalone mobile application that allows them to control inventory.

The vendors use the service to fill unsold inventory by listing the number of tickets or seats available and reducing the prices, if they choose, thereby aiding the internal operations team in bookings.The

consumer-facing app then easily connects the users to a variety of experiences ranging from Broadway in New York to hot air balloon ride in Dubai to Helicopter rides in San Francisco to sailing classes in Hawaii.

Headout is re-imagining the way people discover and experience the world by enabling on-demand access to all the fun and interesting activities in a city.

In essence, Headout is like Uber for tours and travel experiences.

For this idea to become truly functional it is imperative that the process of discovering products is personalised and as a step towards personalization the products are grouped under various categories curated by the editors.

The idea behind these groups is to enable quick discovery of products.

Family outings, dinner dates, adventure sports, walking tours, food tours, water sports are a few examples of the categories that are available.

Moving forward, Headout aims to make these category recommendations dynamic based on past purchases and social behaviours of their customers.

The extensive inventory will be narrowed down using an algorithm to bring about this personalization.

Today, those algorithms mine primary data like the location of the traveler, time of the day, age group and gender.

Notwithstanding the upcoming release will tap into social data that's public allowing it to understand an individual’s interests.

Headout is primarily focused on its app technology that's available on both IOS and Android devices.