Try is one way of doing it. The other way is applying substring only if length is greater than end using Option[String].
invalid end index
scala> val start = 1
start: Int = 1
scala> val end = 1000
end: Int = 1000
scala> Option("urayagppd").filter(_.length > end).map(_.substring(start, end))
res9: Option[String] = None
valid end index
scala> val end = 6
end: Int = 6
scala> Option("urayagppd").filter(_.length > end).map(_.substring(start, end))
res10: Option[String] = Some(rayag)
Also, you can combine filter and map to .collect as below,
scala> Option("urayagppd").collect { case x if x.length > end => x.substring(start, end) }
res14: Option[String] = Some(rayag)
scala> val end = 1000
end: Int = 1000
scala> Option("urayagppd").collect { case x if x.length > end => x.substring(start, end) }
res15: Option[String] = None