Language of market expansion

● A nascent market is growing on the back of local offerings

- AYANTI BERA

KNOW THE VIBES of your audience and speak their language; there's no one-size-fits-all.

That's A, B, C of marketing and that's what local dating apps are banking on to drive loyalty among promiscuous consumers.

Apps such as Aisle's Arike (Malayalam), Anbe (Tamil), Neene (Kannada) and Neetho (Telegu) and Kolkata-based Flutrr, which have cropped up in a last couple of years, are trying to connect singles through their native tongue and are tugging on their sense of community to forge a meaningful connection.

Take Flutrr, which mostly caters to singles in tier II and III markets and supports languages such as English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. The app's monthly active users have risen to more than 6 lakh now, compared to about 1.4 lakh a year ago.

Similarly, Aisle's Malayalam dating app Arike sees nearly twice the daily active user growth recorded by Aisle's primary dating app. About 40% of the growth in monthly active users among all of Aisle's apps comes from its vernacular ones.