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| Edited By: Collin Furtado |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 22, 2018, 03:08 AM IST
We were just trying to create conversations around dating in India. Dating as a concept is new and confusing to a lot of people, but the reality is that a lot of people are dating but we don’t really talk about it. So in our efforts, the idea was to put dating in a normal scenario. There is nothing wrong about dating, so we just wanted to stir conversation and put it in a normal Indian household and say dating is normal. That was our intent and it worked very well because there are no right and wrong answers to these questions. It is a question of understanding what our bias is, what are values are. For us, the aim was just to normalise it. A lot of people reacted positively, a lot of had reservations, doubts and discomforts, which is okay.
Our core audience in India is people in the 18 to 25-year bracket. We are not a matrimony site. Our vision is for people to come and meet. You meet someone, you like him/her, you have a conversation, you can become friends with them and start dating. While some relations last a month, some last forever. There are lots of stories of people who met on Tinder and got married, lots of stories on people who became friends or colleagues, etc. For us, that is the enablement.
We have a freemium model and a paid one in the form of Tinder Plus that offers features like Tinder Passport, Rewind and Super Likes. Our core user-experience is free and will remain that way. However, Tinder Plus is priced at $10-- around Rs 600-- per month. India is a very interesting and potential market. Our current focus is on growth and user-engagement though monetisation will follow. Globally, we do partner occasionally with brands, but we are very selective.
We are constantly innovating and releasing new features. We released Tinder social a few months back which is a completely new way of meeting people in a different context and different setting. We integrated with Spotify globally, unfortunately, Spotify is not available in India.
It is a social discovery platform. Dating is our primary case because most people proactively look for romantic interest. So dating remains a dominant usage, but we are a social discovery platform for meeting new people at the core of it. Say, you go to Facebook to connect with people who you are already friends with, you choose Tinder to meet new people and make friends for the first time.
Socially and structurally the barriers are harder for women and when you are creating the category, the education cycle is a little harder. The beauty of Tinder is that it is empowering, particularly for women because there are no other options if you are a woman and want to meet new people in real life. Women are judged more harshly and it is much harder for women to approach someone and make friends with. Tinder gives them the right to connect with who they want. There are no unsolicited messages and there is nobody bothering them. That is why our female users love the platform. They are way more engaged and we get a lot of positive feedback from them.
