Paktor: meet your date in 15 seconds

Thailand must be a land of lonely souls. I’m judging this based solely on the fact that I’m about to introduce you to yet another dating app available in the country. Paktor is the third new Thai dating app I’m writing about in the space of just two months (see Noonswoon and Avalable before). I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying there must be lots of singles out there.

Originally from Singapore, Paktor launched in Bangkok in August. The app helps users find people nearby who share mutual interests, and allows them to connect to each other while still remaining anonymous.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of players in this dating app game. Christopher D’Cruz, Paktor’s co-founder, points out the three main features that he believes will put Paktor above its competitors:

Simple, anonymous, and local are what Paktor is about. Some of the competitors offer the anonymous option, but not many. However, simplicity is the biggest selling point. You download the app, log in, and we match you with someone in less than a minute.

Quick hook-ups

Paktor, which is Hokkien Chinese for “going on a date” runs with the tagline “All it takes is 15 seconds.”
One month after its launch in Singapore, 30,000 chat sessions have been created in the app.

Users can look and browse through profiles in Paktor with no pressure, thus making it less serious than some dating services. You look at a profile photo and a one-paragraph description. That’s all you get. The app claims it tries to recreate a moment in a bar as in when you find someone you’re interested in, you approach the person and take it from there.

Flirting across Asia

Bangkok is the second city outside of Singapore for Paktor. Next it also added Hong Kong, Jakarta, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh to its line-up. The company is also looking to expand to Seoul, Taiwan, Tokyo, and Bangalore soon.

The product development part of the app is done in Singapore and the company localizes its marketing strategy to suit each country it is in. Now Paktor is available in eight different languages. It also has at least a few local staff in each city. Now the app sees around 100,000 active users.

Christopher explained the startup’s expectations about user numbers:

Paktor will stick with the aforementioned countries until we get one million users and then we consider the next expansion. It’s an aggressive prediction but we hope to reach that milestone by the end of the year.

Thai taboos

Prayer Trairatvorakul, Paktor’s Bangkok lead, shared that the biggest challenge in Thailand for a dating app is the taboo in Thailand about being desperate. Downloading a flirting app can be seen as very desperate. That’s why being anonymous on Paktor could play an important role in attracting more users. She explains:

A big challenge to keep users, make money