For most Indians, dating wasn’t accessible without the phone
Sachin Bhatia, the Delhi-based entrepreneur, had spent a decade working with MakeMyTrip, a pioneering web start-up for researching and booking getaways. In 2010, when MakeMyTrip went public, Bhatia quit in search of a new calling. Once again, he homed in on a growing national trend: love. Young Indians were looking for options other than being set up by their families, but, having had little exposure to the opposite sex, many didn’t know where to begin with dating. India already had several matrimonial websites, but nothing involving casual romance. In Bhatia’s mind, the key to this was the smartphone, which allowed for the privacy of looking, swiping, chatting, flirting, without parents stepping in. Bhatia already knew about Tinder and Grindr in the West, but dating apps that focused primarily on location-essentially a tool for a quick hookup-were in his opinion a step too far for the average Indian. There was a gap in the market for helping millennials discover dating.
And so Truly Madly was formed (the name was inspired by the hit song “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden). In a low-trust society like India, the founders knew, there would be immediate skepticism as to whether profiles were real. Truly Madly attempts to counteract that with a robust system of checks and balances. Getting on the platform requires several forms of identification: driver’s license, college ID, connecting to one’s Facebook or LinkedIn account. Truly Madly conducts its own checks as well by calling the applicant’s family and workplace. (A quarter of all prospective users are rejected. Continue reading “How the Smartphone Is Transforming Relationships in India”