24M | Looking to meet genuine women (or honestly just make some female friends 😅)

This is way out of my comfort zone, but screw it.

I'm 24, 5'11, working as a software engineer, and I've reached a point where I realized I genuinely don't know how to meet women.

It's not that I avoided them on purpose... life just somehow worked out that way.

School? Boys school.

11th & 12th? Co-ed, but everyone (including me) was locked in preparing for JEE Main & Advanced. I don't think I had a proper conversation with even one girl in those two years.

College? Ended up at an IIIT in North India. Our branch had almost no girls, and the entire college had very few.

So here I am at 24, working a 9-6, going to the gym, hanging out with the same group of guys, and wondering... where exactly are people meeting new people?

To make things even funnier, I spent almost five years crushing on one girl I knew from 12th. Tried to impress her in every subtle way possible, never really worked out, and I finally decided to move on a few months ago.

Now I'm trying to stop waiting for life to magically introduce someone.

A little about me:

Gym has become my current personality.

Huge cricket fan.

I love long drives, cafés, random food hunts, and exploring new places.

Sarcasm and self-roasts are my default settings.

I can spend hours talking about startups, tech, movies, or why everyone secretly has terrible music taste except themselves.

I have about 37 hobbies that I keep promising I'll restart someday.

Green flags (I hope):

I can actually hold a conversation.

I reply fast... unless I overthink the reply for 20 minutes.

I'll happily send you memes for absolutely no reason.

I'm not desperately looking for a girlfriend overnight. Honestly, I'd be happy just making genuine female friends too. If something naturally grows beyond that, great. If not, that's fine as well.

If you're around 22–26 and think we'd get along, feel free to DM. Don't just say "hi"—tell me a random fact about yourself or recommend your favorite movie.

And if anyone has actual advice on where normal adults meet people outside of dating apps, I'm all ears because clearly my life has been running on the "male-only lobby" setting. 🥲