Over two months ago, Bumble, the dating-app-turned-networking-suite ran a smart campaign. Get on the app, sign into its professional networking vertical called Bizz, and match with Priyanka Chopra-Jonas — this would get you a shot at interning as a marketing assistant on the sets of the upcoming movie The Sky Is Pink, a project that she is co-producing with Ronnie Screwvala and Siddharth Roy Kapur.

Now, to further the buzz around Bizz, they’re kicking off Find Them On Bumble, starting 17th June. The campaign in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, will spotlight women entrepreneurs and women-driven businesses in India. Faces from different fields and backgrounds, and of all ages, have been brought on board. This includes the likes of Karishma Mehta, founder and CEO of the Humans of Bombay website; Pooja Dhingra, pastry chef and owner of the Le15 Patisserie chain; Falguni Peacock, luxury bridal-wear designer and co-founder of Falguni Shane Peacock; Namrata Purohit of the Pilates Studio; and Imaan Javan, a solar energy developer to name a few. “The idea is to go from digital to physical, and to encourage other women who may have similar aspirations, to connect and learn from them,” says global director of strategy at Bumble, Priti Joshi, who is currently in India to oversee the campaign. “We’ll also be doing offline events, which will also give our users the opportunity to potentially meet some of these women in real life,” she adds.

Bumble entered India only in December 2018. They came in not as a dating site as they did in the United States four years ago, but as a “full suite” networking platform. This followed a laudable evolution narrative that came from the company keeping its ear to the ground. In early 2017, noticing a surge in Bumble users only looking for friends after romantic partners were found, the company went on to scale up with the ‘BFF mode’ for platonic relationships. Again, people Eventually, The same thing happened again, only this time, people had soon started making ‘friends’ in line with their professional interests.

What they haven’t compromised on through this trajectory, is their women-first credentials, pushing that forward aggressively in India with sometimes problematic slogans like “ambitious, not loose” or “curious, not loose”.

Regardless, in half a year, Bumble has surpassed 10 lakh users in the country. Joshi says that Indian Bumble users have taken to the app’s different modes in record numbers: “In India 60% of the female users are using more than one mode on Bumble, much higher than in other countries. It just goes to show that Indian women aren’t just looking for empowered connections in love, or friendships or career — they want it all.”

Before leaving for India, Joshi talked about the company’s specific interest in Bizz for the Indian market, and consequently, on their learnings of the business, art, and entrepreneurial climate for women in the country. Edited excerpts.

It’s been six months in India. How have users taken to the platform?

We had over 1 million registered users in India in just four months following our launch — and we have a total of over 60 million users in 150 countries around the world. We are very excited about this initial growth in our market in India. Women in India have made the first move over 2.5 million times. They are sending twice as many messages as women in the rest of the world.

We’re especially excited to see that our female user base in India has grown more than 1.5x faster than males, since launch.

Is the common perception of Bumble as a dating site deterring those who want to use the professional Bizz mode and not Date?

We understand that a lot of individuals might be in committed relationships — so the app has a provision where you can hide Date mode, so that you only have the other two, BFF and Bizz, showing up. Should you be interested in a romantic partner again, you can reintroduce the Date mode right back.

Are all three modes optional then?

No, you cannot turn off Bizz and BFF. The idea is that with Date mode, you find one person to stay committed to for a long time. You don’t really need to go back on it. But from a BFF and Bizz standpoint, the need to connect with possible friends or professional contacts will vary at different times in your life.

In your experience in India, do you sense a pattern of emerging change in the country’s career landscape?

Not yet, since its only been a few months — but in a year’s time maybe we should connect to see a time shift. What’s exciting as I’m digging into the metrics is that a majority of Indian women on Bizz are looking to network, find a mentor, a partner. They’re looking for real, authentic one-to-one professional connections to go through a [work] experience together. They’re also exploring the ideas of what it means to be a mentor or a mentee.The other interesting thing is that industry-wise, while marketing is one of the biggest categories, most of the Bizz users are interested in the arts — creatives, people in fashion, artists. Tech and media are the next few industries. That’s a wonderfully diverse set.

What is different about a Bizz user when compared to users on popular professional networking sites like LinkedIn?

I can’t speak for others, but what I can tell you is that, a lot of our younger women [on Bizz] are looking for internships and part-time work, which aligns with what we’d have hypothesized. In women over 30, interest in tech fields tends to be a little bit higher. In women younger than this, an interest in the arts is high. This is what we’re seeing in the last four to five months. It’ll be easier over time to see how that changes or flows.