Dating apps are clearly trying to woo women over, says PREEJA ARAVIND
With the 2016 launch of Tinder in India, swiping right became the norm for ‘quick dates’ for the millennials in the country. What’s more, it opened the floodgates for more dating apps meant for all kinds of people. Even Facebook has jumped into the fray with its announcement of rolling out a dating app by the end of this year.
The dating app market seems to be booming as those who are looking for companionship in this mobile world are increasingly browsing through their phones for it. But there still is a whole wide gender gap between the users; men to women user ratio on Tinder itself is 2:1—especially in India.
“It has a lot to do with the kind of people you encounter on these apps. We women are naturally cautious, and as soon as a one unsavoury incident occurs, or we feel it is going down that path, we avoid it completely,” explains 29-year-old Neha. She used Tinder two years ago, but her dating experience on it was cut short because she found most men wanted a short term ‘hook-up’ while she was looking for something meaningful.
Priyanka Chopra has invested in the dating app Bumble
And women retell these experiences with friends, making other potential users hesitate. Thirty-seven-year-old Kalpana has never used any dating app or website. “I am tempted, of course, but I am cautious by nature and will go for such things after much deliberation. At my age I cannot go for something like Tinder. Even casual dating needs to be a bit mature for me. I am a little unsure if I will get genuine dates or just perverted whackos. I have heard a few horror stories which has kind of put me off these things,” she declares.
Some women opt for dating apps simply out of curiosity. “I installed Tinder because I wanted to know what the whole la di da about it was. But then it started showing my students as potential matches and that was totally ridiculous. So, I deleted the app. I hope my profile is still not on it,” confides 30-year-old Anna, who tried Tinder for about a week. The world over it is a similar story. According to a May 2018 paper published in Personality and Individual Differences, women on dating websites and apps are more discerning than men. Women spend more time on a dating app or a website, as compared to men, because they take time to consider each potential match before deciding.
The app itself matters too. For women, the location-based match on Tinder was a serious detriment. Neeru, a 26-year-old medical student, wanted to try Tinder but when she tried to switch off the location search, she couldn’t and thus she never tried Tinder. However, she did end up using TrulyMadly.
Dating apps as such are not bad at all. In fact, statistics show that about one-fifth of committed relationships and about 17 percent of marriages have some kind of beginnings in the virtual world. But it has also to do a lot with age group. The average age group of dating app users is the 20s.
Neeru’s encounter with a dating app was a good one. “I was in this far-off village where all I was ever doing was seeing patients and reading. I was bored. I wanted to talk to people. New people. So I installed TrulyMadly. I made some good friends through them from across the country—I was able to find people with similar tastes and likes. I met my current boyfriend through this app. We met a few times and realised there was more to us than being friends,” she recounts her experience.
The happy experience of TrulyMadly emboldened Neeru to try out other dating apps too before settling back with TrulyMadly. “I never went back to Tinder, but after TrulyMadly, which a friend suggested to me, I also tried Aisle,” she says.
This mindset of experimenting, compounded with these 20-somethings always being on their phones, might be just one of the reasons why the online dating industry in India is flourishing. According to Statista, the industry is expected to make a revenue of about USD 13 million in 2018. Horror stories notwithstanding, Statista predicts that over the next four years, this industry is going to grow at Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10.3 percent.
Earlier this month, Bumble—called Tinder’s rival—was launched in India by none other than our desi girl Priyanka Chopra. Bumble’s biggest USP is that it allows women to make the first move, allowing them better control over dating online. In India, the app has the option of Hindi as well, which will sit quite well with its target market of the under-30 potential users.
And the apps are constantly changing as well. Tinder announced its latest update of adding ‘gender choice’ for users apart from the regular ‘man’ and ‘woman’. This comes on the heels of Tinder appeasing its women users by making a ‘My Move’ option available to them.
About the gender choice update, Taru Kapoor, General Manager Tinder India, in her statement says: “Users are best to assert their own identity, and our latest update gives them the opportunity to decide how to express themselves authentically. I think it is vital to be reflective of our time, and it has been a good year in India for gender, sexuality and personal autonomy.”
(All app user names have been changed to maintain the women’s anonymity)