What started as an Instagram-inspired social experiment has turned into a startup idea. (Refer: Men https://grapevine.in/post/808462ef-8ae0-4269-aaa3-c683ba1194bb and women https://grapevine.in/post/6bcaeffa-0cac-44a2-98a5-fc7a14786e85 survey)
Few observations:
So, coming to the matchmaking platform. The idea is to have all aspects of life considered - personality, profession, family, demographics, physical attributes, etc. and have a weighted scale against them.
Though I have my doubts here
Share your thoughts on the compatibility algorithm and the problems we may face.
P.S. I am not a techie, will need someone to actually build this. Will take care of marketing. Let's help someone find their soulmate ❤️
P.P.S. If this takes off, I will change my username to TimaSaparia
The problem you're trying to solve is quite a psychological and serendipitous one. Tech doesn't really solve for everything, especially human behaviour that's rooted in biology.
For starters, pics are super important. People want xyz attributes in people that look visually appealing to them first. Not the other way around, like how many assume it is or should be. Not everyone makes physical appearance top priority, but it is the top 3 for 90% of people.
Secondly, people tend to date around their socio economic circle mostly. No person matches with someone above their league (or doesn't sustain it) because people like staying in their leagues for the most part. Men will still date below their league occasionally but women will rarely do the same (hypergamy at play). Matching on the basis of that is much more fruitful but challenging since it's difficult to determine socio economic bg from pics or few pieces of information.
Thirdly, dating/matchmaking apps need to make money to be sustainable. And that goes against the objective of matching right partners in a short period of time. Monetization without returning/repeat customers is extremely challenging if not impossible for a business.
I would personally not recommend going down this path unless you ground your research in psychology and human behaviour. Even then, monetizing it is a challenge. Could be a hobby project maybe. I'd recommend figuring out a platform for platonic friendships instead, much more glaring need of the hour.
Why do you say platonic friendships are need of the hour?
Because most (sensible) people are on dating apps to socialize and make new friends first, think about dating later.
Sad part of living in metro cities is you don't have many avenues to make friends as an adult. Social media platforms don't work, dating platforms don't work, random events/mixers/parties don't work either. New person in new city usually goes to Tinder/bumble/grindr to find people their age.
There is a lack of places and opportunities to meet new people and make friends these days outside of school/college or work.
This'll work great only till one gets a match. But you can't solve chemistry with math.
The discovery / heuristics of finding compatibility is complex and is sometimes best outsourced (aka arranged), not because people are incapable of finding their match but because there is zero self awareness and often limited honesty.
So I'd say the approach is better than a Shaadi, but not dramatically better.
You could solve this for hiring, thats an equally complex compatibility problem.
Agreed and hiring is as complex. At least here both parties are willing to get into a match, hiring gets affected due to budget constraints, ghosting etc
As does matrimony. Gets affected by budget constraints, ghosting, etc.
Willing to build the tech for this if you can explain why you could handle the business for this pretty well?
Why could I handle the tech for this pretty well? I can answer that in 1 weekend (2 weekends max).
are you looking for an interview answer - MBA, handled businesses of MRR $$$$ or an emotional heartfelt one would convince you?
P.S. If you do take this up, we got no money to pay ourselves. just highlighting
Sounds interesting enough to me. Let's chat more.
I understand there will be no money. I make and monetize (try to) side-projects too - most of them don't make any money. We'll make money if it succeeds!
Are you planning to set a baseline for entry into your app, expectation mismatch (of crowd)leads to bad experience for both parties You can't serve all from a single platform.
Example one buys a certain type of clothes form Meesho (lower tier) and Myntra has different types of stock.
While some men requires glorified maid and some expect an equal partner.
The skew of certain types dissuade the female users from the platforms, Intresting observation I had was very less numbers of lawyer girls in some of these apps and many more teachers.
Interesting observation.
But your question, we can have rating system. but some Meesho boys may want Meesho girls and rating system may skew their plans if Meesho boys meets only Myntra girls before
Really bugged me, do you have any suggestion?
One way could be having a hard toggle in UI,
likes of flipkart/shopsy or mmt/mmtluxe
can think of BriyaniMatchappClassic and BiryaniMatchappProfessional
then handle remaining case in matching logic.
If branding is off you'll accumulate majority of one type it'll throw off the other, app can't have all types to offer.
From layman user if
Suppose a business man starts looking in your app and only finds techie girls he'll be put off,
Or Some corporate employee sees only gharelu matches she'll quit.
But if you have dominantly only 1 type of men and 1 type of women it's better to restrict to that only rather than juggling expectations.
Pureplar matrimony app have segregated on broad demographics (iitiimshaadi/gujarati matrimony etc - these are seperate brands) that seems to work somewhat. But not truly helpful in modern context.
I'm having an Idea for an open source marriage app. (Not a business)
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