Naman Parakh, a visually impaired 20-year-old from Hyderabad who studies at St Xavier’s College in South Mumbai, recently found himself in a fix. Uneasy about travelling by train alone to his place of birth during the festive season, he had no friend to turn to, as most of his peers had already departed for their hometowns. Though he eventually had to rely on relatives, the experience spurred the third-year BMS student into forming, on  Sunday, October 26, the Mumbai edition of a Delhi-based platform, TravAcs, a contraction of ‘travel accessibility’, which pairs visually impaired individuals with sighted individuals who are paid to serve as guides known as TravAcsers.

Parakh is supported in this endeavour by fellow Xavierite Urvi Rathi, a first-year management undergraduate who hails from Gujarat. The students are working to create a resource pool of citizens who wish to join the service, after which there will be background checks, training, and a formal launch that is anticipated early next year. In a single day since the formation of the Mumbai edition, the duo received 25 applications — mostly from those in their early and mid-20s.