Love Out Loud Asia is an online dating app that takes couples offline

It’s lovely to see our past Startup Arena finalists scale to greater heights and return to our competition. Six months from their first appearance, the boys from Triibe are back battling on the Startup Arena Jakarta 2013 stage, but in a different outfit. The team is now channeling majority of its efforts on its new baby LOLA, also known as Love Out Loud Asia, a private dating app built for the Asian community.

We’ve covered the app a couple of weeks back, saying that it has shifted from web to mobile app, hoping that users will not miss out on their daily matches. It encourages singles to break out of their shell, post their date ideas online, and then get offline to go on dates. It has a formula that sends a perfect match to you based on your history, Facebook and profile information, facial features, and your date ideas.

Image recognition technology sets LOLA apart

Co-founder Kenneth Lim proudly presents his new baby, LOLA, on stage. The matching algorithm is based on 30 percent date idea, 30 percent Facebook and profile information, 20 percent image recognition technology, and 20 percent usage history. As mentioned in the previous post, the startup has partnered the National University of Singapore School of Computing for its image recognition technology, matching similar facials features from the profile photos.

According to co-founder Wong Say Jon, researches have shown the more similar you and the opposite gender look, the higher the compatibility, and that you will be more attracted to people who do look like you. In Chinese, it is also known as fuqixiang (夫妻相).

The Singapore-based startup strongly believes that singles should spend lesser time online and more time offline, going on dates. He elaborates:

We’d like to think that our focus is really on how to get our users offline and on real dates rather than doing ‘online activities’, which is why we use date ideas. We are eventually going to direct more effort in developing a full product catering for singles, couples, and merchants.

LOLA currently has 5,200 singles between 21 to 28 years old. He reveals that 75 percent of them hold a Bachelors degree. On average, the app is looking at 38 percent daily active user rate, with 10% daily mutual likes, and over 1,000 singles successfully paired since its launch couple of months back.

Social driven e-commerce a direction the team is looking at

Kenneth added that a natural progression for the startup, since it focuses on great date ideas, is to serve the couples through the introduction of a “datebook” where it hand picks and curates great date activities that couples can choose to go. So instead of just getting singles together on the app itself, it hopes to extend its services to couples. He added:

We want to have a business model that does not just focus on the online dating market, but also exploring the possibility of a social driven e-commerce where both dating couples and merchants can participate.

He says that the team will have a much greater shot at success if it is able to successfully build an innovative product and strong community revolving around the concept of “going on a great date”.

The market that LOLA is looking at, is both Asia’s online dating market and the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia, where the former is worth $1 billion and the latter valued at $2.7 billion by 2016. The addressable online dating market that the team is looking at is worth $26.9 million, on a yearly recurring basis. Citing reasons why e-commerce market was chosen, Say Jon says that it hopes to be a platform where people would be able to purchase items such as movie tickets and dining vouchers online, to take online dating offline.

The startup also tells us that it currently has users from cities such as Singapore, Manila, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur. Other competitors that are in similar space include Noonswoon, Avalable, Hey, and Paktor.

At Startup Arena, Suzuki from Global Brain asks if the team is keen on expansion efforts in Japan, since Japan are not as popular in the country yet. Kenneth explains that they are focused on establishing their grounds before expanding into other markets within Asia. Saemin of Rakuten Ventures commented that the startup should also take into consideration when couples break up or when they get more serious, are they still going to be on the platform? He notes that they must  be mindful of building up its UX and making sure that the technology belongs to them.  Jimmy from K Cube Ventures also noted that it is important to bring more pretty girls on board with them to attract more guys. Kenneth says that the reason why it is private because it caters to women who would prefer their profiles not be browsed by people so the “hot” factor does not really matter. Khailee from 500Startups highlights that they need to get the growth recipe right for its expansion efforts.

See more: 6 dating apps from Asia

(Editing by Terence Lee)

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Jakarta 2013, our event running on November 21 and 22. For the rest of our Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @TechinAsia, and on our Facebook page.