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Dating apps have had a hard time in India, India, India, and India.
"What we love is the potential for us in India," Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd tells Fortune.
Bumble is set to launch in India this fall, with new investor and counselor Priyanka Chopra at its side. The startup started working on dating and social networking in India about a month ago, a team of 20 people working on launching in India and getting their executives familiar with the market. Bumble higher-ups studied the launch process for American tech companies in South Asia.
Dating apps in India, including Tinder, have had difficulties convincing women to sign up. "The barrage of messages that hits your inbox is a swarm of locusts," one Mumbai woman, Anushree Majumdar, told the Wall Street Journal in June. The Indian dating app TrulyMadly said at the time that women made up about 20% of its users.
Tinder, however, introduced its Bumble copycat women-message-first feature in India last week.
To address concerns about safety for Indian women, Bumble can introduce a feature allowing women to set their profiles to only show their first initial-no first or last name. The app will also introduce new features for reporting bad behavior. Those safety features could expand to other markets down the line.
"There are hundreds of millions of young women in India who are part of a larger movement of their lives, and they are demanding respect and independence," Chopra's manager Anjula Acharia, another Bumble advisor and investor, said in a statement .
Bumble created versions of its app in Hindi and "Hinglish," adapted its marketing to the Indian market, and its user interface and matching algorithm for India's levels of network connectivity. Tinder, for comparison, offers its app in four languages in India.
Bumble will now be in 160 countries, but most of Bumble's International India has.
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Bumble enters a market that already has American and European apps, including Tinder; local apps; and legacy brands around matchmaking. "When we took a closer look at India," Wolfe Herd says.
With its main dating app, Bumble BFF and Bumble Bizz. These verticals will look much like they do in Bumble's other markets.
Chopra-known in the United States for her TV show Quantico but for years one of India's most famous Bollywood stars-will appear with Wolfe Herd at the fallout. She's serving as an adviser to Bumble and has been "deeply involved" in the market-strategy and creative campaigns, the company says. Bumble declined to disclose the amount of Chopra's investment.
"I've always believed that investing in social transformation and economic growth, and I'm inspired by the real, I'm proud of it. to have the opportunity to contribute to this movement as a partner, "Chopra, who first worked with the company on the launch of Bumble Bizz in 2017, said in a statement.
Bumble is expanding into the high-growth market as a result of a giant match, which owns Tinder. Wolfe Herd spoke at FortuneMost Powerful Women Summit Wednesday just over an hour after her legal opponent, Match CEO Mandy Ginsberg.
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