December 5, 2022
NEW DELHI – Dating apps have significantly grown on the graph in the past decade and have definitely changed the approach towards romantic relationships.
However, love has always been a business. And not only in the 21st century. In the past, families have always made sure that their offspring was betrothed to the right pursuers, so to ensure wealth and status for the family. More recently, post WW2, the first dating agencies were born, making matchmaking a truly profitable business – not to mention the whole “marriage by proxy” business.
Sybil Shiddell, Country Manager India for Gleeden said, “The World Wide Web was the end of physical boundaries and opened a whole new world of opportunities for the “love business” entrepreneurs – think about eHarmony, Meetic, and Match.com. Today the market is dominated by apps, created to keep up with current mobile life.”
And just like any other business, even the loved one branched out.
Ravi Mittal, CEO & Founder, QuackQuack said, “Love sells the best, period. Our app has seen gradual growth since its debut roughly a decade back, but post-pandemic, we witnessed a massive surge in numbers, and currently, we are catering to more than 20 million trusted users.
“Coming to how dating has now become a market, I believe matchmaking has always been a profitable industry, especially in a place such as India, where arranged marriages were once dominant. In the same line of thought, right now, online dating is having a moment of its own. With more people getting comfortable with the idea of finding the one from the comfort of their homes, online dating services have taken over the romance market. In the last two years, we saw around 56% of young daters have a virtual first date. Love is not the only thing in demand; comfort and convenience are too. We try to supply not only a high volume of algorithm-driven ideal matches at a faster pace but also a secure and safe platform for our users.”
“In the last five years, dating app usage has tripled, and the rapid-growing industry continues to benefit from people’s increased spending capacity, increasing app-dependent nature, hectic work schedules, and gender equality.
Online dating apps have attracted a lot more female users than their traditional counterpart owing to their coveted safety features. Our user data shows that around 54% of female and 40% of our male users use the app for both friendship and romance.”