Professional networking startup leap.club to open its first physical club for women in Mumbai next month

In 2020, former Zomato executives, Ragini Das and Anand Sinha, started leap.club, a professional network of rising women leaders. 

Over the past four years, it has literally, and figuratively, grown by leaps and bounds with over 25,000 paid members on its platform. It has become a strong networking tool among mid- and senior-level women in the workforce, offering a plethora of online and offline activities and events.

Now, leap.club is taking its mission forward by opening its first offline club on July 10–a physical space in Bandra, Mumbai. The startup hopes to replicate the model with more such clubs in the city and in Delhi and Bengaluru.

“In the past two years of doing different events, what we learned was that the in-person kind of interaction exploded, and that’s when the idea of making our own space where we could translate all this energy and excitement took root,” Ragini Das, Co-founder, leap.club tells HerStory.

Das says the idea of a physical club was at the back of the founders’ minds from the very beginning. But the pandemic put paid to their plans, and they had to run it on online mode instead. But once the pandemic abated, and women thronged to their events, the idea of creating a safe physical space for women began to gain momentum. 

“We realised women needed places to meet other women, they needed things to happen at these places, a place to work out of, a space to record content or do podcasts. We initially thought of launching it in Gurugram, but chose Mumbai because of the vibe and strength of the community in the city,” Das explains. 

Das shares that they scouted and looked at around 32 locations before zeroing in on the space at Linking Road in Bandra. 

leap.club’s physical club will host all kinds of events, book clubs, and fitness sessions and also offer space to record content and podcasts for women. Some of these features come at reasonable additional charges, says Das. 

Members can visit the club anytime between 9 am and 9 pm every day of the week.

“We have community style workstations, a café on the ground floor that delivers food and drink, three meeting rooms, that include the podcast and content creation room that offers recording equipment and is sound-proof. 

“There’s also a non-gender room right in front, in case a member wants to have a meeting with a male team member and also a lounge area to meet other women,” she elaborates. 

Members can also bring in guests for an additional fee.

A cool part of this space, according to Das, is the library that has books written only by women authors. Everything–from the art on the walls to the D2C products on the shelves–are created by women. The architect and the photographer at the club are also women.

“We have tried to keep the space extremely subtle while being young and colourful. We want it to be classy and welcoming, and this striking balance was brought in by my designers,” says Das.

Members already have access to the leap.club app where they can browse through a separate section for offline members. This will provide them with all the information they need–who’s checked in at the moment, connect to other members, an events calendar, and how to book the meeting rooms. 

The founders hope to have 1,500 women in its first club. Their goal is to open more clubs in the next few months in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Das finds it heartening that 100 women have already paid the annual membership fees of Rs 30,000 without even seeing the place. Another 100 members will be onboarded for August. There are over 2,000 women on the waitlist; the aim is to onboard 100 women into the club, every month for the first year.

(The copy has been updated to correct a typo.)