India ‘ a country’ that is known for its values, cultures, or earlier is being called as ‘Snake Charmer’s country. There are many intergenerational conflicts that Indian immigrants and their children faces but perhaps none is as intense as ‘dating’. Not only outside of India, but question is, does ‘dating’ really exists in India?
Even though there is lot of cultural boundation, traditional restrictions, no-parental acceptance, not only this but, no girl can take male friend in the house or invite, same for boy, no boy can invite or take girl friend in the house very easily, especially in the rural areas. In ancient time, two couple only meets after marriage. Obviously, this looks ‘insane’ in comparison to ‘western culture’. In some of Indian villages, women can not go outside of home before marriage or women after marriage cannot uncover ‘their faces’ in the house itself. I believe this appears crazy.
But the boundaries are breaking, traditions are changing, Indian youth is moving ahead, parent thinking is changing and more is happening. Study shows that more than 60% of youth is avoiding ‘arrange marriages’ especially in urban areas. Some of 90’s existing on-line portal like Shaadi.com growth is declining by more than 10-15% YoY. ‘Local Pandit’ age is diminishing slowly.
It is not hidden that ‘India’ is considered as one of the second fastest growing economy in world, in terms of technology, internet, mobile penetration, digital communication and so all global businesses are investing in ‘India’. Twitter accounts 17% of Indian users globally, Facebook has more than 100 million Indian users, and all global internet giants are focusing on India. Isn’t it interesting to find out, or know what is happening in India?
It is.
Indian users are growing on internet like ‘hockey stick curve’. India will touch more than 500 million users on internet by 2018. 90% will be on smart phones by 2020. This is crazy, literally crazy.
Traditions, values and thinking are changing
With this growth of digital communication in India, Indian culture, tradition, values, beliefs and thinking are changing. Every youth of India is connecting over internet, sharing information, and getting knowledge. In this ‘pace’ of Smartphone users in India, ‘Online dating’ is not lagging behind. The way Indian youth, connects, interact or meet has changed, led to ‘spark’ for dating sector.
Many players for example: Tinder, Hinge, Match. eHarmony, POF, OkCupid, Zoosk are keeping their ‘Eye’ on Indian market. In this spree, many Indian players are also came in last 3 years for example, Woo, Thrill, Vee, iCrushiFlush, Elop, dateIITians, Cogxio and trulymadly are there.
Still, most of the Indian users are fearing to go on online dating apps or websites, or nor even talking about with their friends or families, but this is breaking slowly. Castism is getting out of the mind of youth, and it will be interesting to see further in coming years.
The internet users on online dating has reached to more than 115 million and is expected to reach more than 200 Million by 2018. USA, UK, China market is going towards saturation but Indian market is the next future, in next 3 years maximum. The other second largest market after India is ‘South East Asia’. The most interesting things to see in coming years, as how ‘online dating’ is becoming mature, more in to ‘Real Time’.
Recently, I launched ‘mobile dating app’ for COGXIO and saw the interesting statistics as 67% of graduates under age 18-28 are installing, 27% of marriage people are also trying, and 42% of females are installing though less as compared to USA, where 64% of female are using dating apps. Also, recently in last 3 years, this space has witnessed interest from global investors. Many of the online dating companies or mobile dating apps got funded with 10’s of million dollar. This shows a clear path for ‘Online Dating’ sector in India becoming hottest sector with unexpected growth.
I am very optimistic in this sector to evolve in coming years with the change of face of Indian youths as well of Indian parents.
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