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Follow UsMUMBAI, INDIA: Recently, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg married his long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan after dating her for seven years. Are you among those yearning for a bond with a techie or a geek? You need not go very far.
With a personal savings of over Rs.5 lakh and loads of software coding for over a year, the trio was all set to launch portal's first version in late January this year. Since the launch, more than 7,000 users from India have become portal's members.
According to Singh, co-founder, Chief of Operations and Business Management, when the site was started, it was only open to techies and engineering professionals from IITs and IIMs but later it was open to others as they got many requests.
“Our site is very different as it is a social networking-cum-social dating site and not a personal dating site. The idea was to create a platform where people can come and make friends, build bonds and express their feelings,” Singh says.
Portal's registration process is far more unique than most of such portals that exist today on the web.
The registration process is quite rigorous as it can take up to three days. As it involves verification and authentication of user's credentials - personal email address, contact number as well as ID proofs such IDs of college, institute or university.
After submitting details, the user will get an email confirmation from the site, he/she can give a missed call or will receive a code on the mobile phone.
“As a user it's important that you are making friendship or dating with a real person and not any fake. So, our registration process is different with cross-checks of users' details along with college or university's ID proof to ensure the user belongs to a particular institute,” Singh explains.
Once the user's membership is approved, he/she can find like-minded people on the network. He adds that members can express emotions to their buddies, send gifts online and find their dates.
Besides, the site offers some premium and optional features such as personal and group messages, SMS, video messages like face-to-face — 3D real time chats. Singh points out that the site has three levels of dating system — first is becoming buddies, second flirting or crush depending on profile's acceptance and third is dating — going for movies, buying online tickets, shopping and sending gifts.
For users' personal security reasons, the site uses an automatic system that looks for email address or phone numbers in posted messages. In case it finds them then the system automatically deletes it from such messages.
At present, the site has tied up with some 100 varsities in India and abroad. Apparently, it is open only to Indians. However, it will be open to people from around the world by July later this year.
“In a year's time we are looking for around one lakh users but only with genuine profiles. So we are not having high expectations,” Singh informs but expects around 1 million users in next three years.
In terms of revenue, the site is looking largely at advertisements, e-commerce and premium profile services such as 3D- video-chats. Going ahead, the start-up is looking to raise around $1 million over the next three years for expansion of operations and software development for the site.