Tinder, one of the largest players in the dating app segment has announced that they will be setting up operations in New Delhi. India operations will be headed by IIT Delhi and Harvard graduate Taru Kapoor. Tinder already claims to be the market leader in the segment in India, and is looking at accelerating user acquisitions and improving engagement by adopting India-friendly strategies.
Given that casual dating is probably not as widely accepted in India as it would be in other markets Tinder operates in, the Tinder team will certainly need to fine tune their product strategy to hit a chord with the audience here. This is a segment that has been plagued by fake profiles and ‘fraandship’ requests for as long as it has existed. Turing this around is no small ask. While Tinder as a product promises control and privacy, the desi audience that it will attract is going to be prone to bad eggs. Many users have been quick to recount their experiences with such services as not being pleasant. The traditional Indian audience has often been pegged as conservative, but young India today is much more open to trying out newer things.
Love your phone
The Indian market has been witness to several industry behemoths attempting to replicate their global strategies here, but then quickly realizing that the global template might not work in India. This, plus the fact that we’re one of the largest online user bases in the world, points to a logical requirement for customized operations here. The market size is too big to ignore, and the strategy needs to be intensely local. While Tinder claims to be seeing huge traction in India, especially among female users, a true measure of success here would be the number of reciprocative engagements they are able to generate. Will Tinder weave in new colours in the social fabric of India? Or will it wilt under the disapproving gaze of the stern Indian parent?
Love? What love?
‘We build products that bring people together’, reads the Tinder website. A tall ask, especially in a nation as diverse as India. They might just discover that a product tweak alone might not suffice for this market – the audience might need some conditioning too!
