Indian Dating Scenerio and how is TitanicApp revolutionising the Dating sector in India
Two people unwittingly falling in love over the internet - This is the basic plot of
the 1998 Hollywood rom-com You’ve Got Mail. Online dating has come a long
way since then. Many Indians are swiping right to register a “like” or left to skip
ahead to the next one. India is, in fact, projected to be one of the fastest growing
markets for online dating applications, worldwide. The old tradition of arranged
marriage is giving way to a new, westernised style of dating, where growing
numbers of people are choosing to date for fun, without the end goal of marriage.
Exposure to western culture has seen the gradual breakdown of the traditional
Indian family; arranged marriages have become less formal; more people are
choosing to live in separate homes to their parents or in-laws, and dating and sex
out of wedlock are becoming increasingly common.
So in a country where casual relationships are still frowned on, how did such a
change come to be? The impetus was always there - the urge to connect with
other human beings is very natural. In India, it is particularly hard to meet
someone outside your immediate social circle. You can meet someone at school
or college or at work – and that’s pretty much it. Especially for women, you can’t
really walk up to someone and say hello. It’s awkward. And as is the case
everywhere, finding love is very difficult. Either you wait for it to happen, or you
have to resign yourself to the idea that your parents will choose your marriage
partner for you. There’s very little individual agency. In the status quo, Dating
apps like Titanic give women more control over who they meet and who they
date.
With a flurry of apps like Tinder, Vee,TrulyMadly, Happn and OKCupid which use
geotagging and location-based searching to give away your location to all the
men out there “hunting”, some women are not liking what they see.
Some who are not privy to the workings of online dating are reluctant to try it
because of security reasons and a general assumption that people you meet
online aren’t as genuine as people you meet in person. Titanic, however, comes
out as strikingly more Indian in this sea of western apps - because it seems to be
the only one who truly understood it’s market. It’s extremely important in a
country like India, where women didn’t have control over who they dated and who
they married for ages, it becomes extremely important for someone to take
affirmative action and let women be the captain for once. Its main innovation may
be that it lets women be the hunters, not the hunted. It focuses on online safety and privacy of women interested in dating, by eliminating issues a woman
encounters on conventional online dating platforms like privacy and profile
visibility. Heres how it works - You can’t see the profile of a woman who has
opted for privacy until and unless she likes you. If she likes you, then you’ll be
able to see her pictures, post and bio, else you can’t even know that she exists
on Titanic.
So if you are a twenty-something in India looking for your Tom Hanks to find you
online - remember this : the men you meet on Tinder most likely are not
available; they are there prowling and looking for some fun. It’s obvious how it
can never be too easy to turn a casual encounter into a meaningful relationship.
In the scene of changing dating landscape and increasing hook-up culture, we at
Titanic intend to make things a little less agonizing for women by making sure
dating stays what it should be about - finding that special someone to spend your
