Bharat and the Future of the Dating Industry
Global Dating Insights is delighted to share a guest post from Kaushik Banerjee, the Founder & CEO of flutrr, India’s first multilingual dating app that provides inclusive dating experiences in one’s own language.
What is happening in Bharat?
There are two Indias. One India is English speaking, which is 9.8% of the population. And the other is BHARAT, the vernacular India which has 18 major languages. India is the second largest English speaking market in the world. But less than 10% speak and understand English. India is a colonial country. English is not only a language barrier, but also a social barrier.
With the advent of JIO, the telecom revolution ushered in by Mukesh Ambani, cheap and reliable internet data is available in the remotest corners of the country. Coupled with this is the price crash in the smartphone market, due to cheap Chinese imports. These 2 factors have ensured that the youth in the remotest corners of the country have smartphones with cheap internet data.
India has the cheapest data prices in the world. This trend is underlined by the fact that even players like Apple are aggressively pushing for distribution in Tier 2/3/4 towns. Almost 52% of India’s smartphone sales happen in small towns. This has led to a massive consumption of content on mobile internet in the small towns. India is the world’s largest mobile internet video consumption market which is 5 times bigger than China.
India is also one of the youngest populations in the world with a median age of 28 years and 60% of the population below 35 years of age. With the consumption of content, this vernacular speaking Bharat youth have developed similar aspirations as their English speaking counterparts in the large metros. But alas, they do not know English. 82% of Google searches in India happen in the vernacular languages.
The Indian dating Industry
At first the global players like Tinder and Bumble entered the Indian market targeting the English speaking, high disposable income youth of the metros. Soon they were joined by copycat Indian players like TrulyMadly and Aisle. But they are all English dating Apps fighting for the same audience which is 60-80 million in size. The industry is Rs. 3600 crores ( USD 450 million) in size and growing at 20% per annum.
India is already the second largest dating market in the world, after the USA. But this is only the tip of the iceberg , as the penetration of these English dating apps is less than 7-8% of the Indian youth. The vernacular youth market is largely underserved and not penetrated. These vernacular youth have the same aspirations and want to find romantic partners online. But there are only English dating Apps and hence no choice for them.
Also the English dating apps have focused on developing high paying niche markets. They have costly premium subscriptions valued at USD 20-25 per month. These subscriptions just does not work in the vernacular, small town market. Even in the large metros, these English dating Apps have only 6-7% paying users and are struggling for profitability.
Even players like Netflix, have lowered their subscription rates thrice in 2 years in India. But have not been able to penetrate the hinterlands. At Least on Netflix, if you pay a subscription, you know there is a huge content library. But on a dating App, paying subscription, is like a roll of the dice. You may or may not find a romantic partner. This dynamics just does not cut ice with the vernacular youth in small towns.
The advent of flutrr
flutrr was born to penetrate the 500 million strong vernacular , youth market in small towns looking for online romance , but was completely underserved. flutrr has the following differentiators:
- It supports online romance in 16 Indian languages
- It has proprietary tech for safety and privacy of small town women. Without these features, flutrr would not have been able to onboard small town women, which is critical for the success of a dating App
- No Costly monthly premium subscription. Instead , the revenue model is built around pay-per-use microtransactions which is tailored to the hinterlands of Bharat. This has led to 29% paying users on flutrr.
flutrr was launched in Dec 2021 and is within touching distance of 1 million downloads. Clocking a monthly revenue of INR 20-21lakhs ( USD 28k) , it is slated to be profitable by end of 2024. flutrr acquires users at a cost of INR 4 ( USD 4 cents ) as compared to English dating Apps acquiring users at INR 180 ( USD 2.5) .
flutrr has raised close to USD 750k from Times of India (India’s biggest media conglomerate), Chennai Angels (India’s second largest Angel platform) and CXOs of Fortune 500 companies.
flutrr’s Positioning
On one end of the spectrum are the English dating Apps which have become synonymous with casual dating, flings and hook-ups. That is quite a taboo in small towns.
On the other end of the spectrum are the matrimonial apps , where mostly parents try to find brides and grooms for arranged marriage.
With rising aspirations in small towns , the youth want to avoid arranged marriages . But they also do not prefer casual dating, especially the small town women.
Hence flutrr sits in-between the two ends of the spectrum and stands for long term stable romantic relationships. It is neither casual dating. Nor is it arranged marriages. It promises and delivers deep and meaningful connections . This therefore takes away the taboo of the word “dating” and gives a fillip to small town women to join. Consequently the men follow and love stories begin. On English dating apps the match rate is 1-2%. On flutrr it is 9-10%.
flutrr uses imagery of old school romance in its communication backed by the credibility of Times of India.
