INTERVIEW: Info Edge’s latest acquisition Aisle’s founder explains why it was difficult for him to raise funds

• InfoEdge has acquired 76% shareholding in the dating app for $12 million.
• Aisle claims to have acquired over 6.5 million users in the last eight years of launching its operations.
• Aisle has been trying to place itself as a limited use dating app meant to be deleted.

InfoEdge — the parent company of matrimonial platform Jeevansaathi.com — has entered the online dating space with the acquisition of Aisle. The Sanjeev Bikchandani-led company has acquired 76% shareholding in the dating app for $12 million.

Even though Aisle claims to have acquired over 6.5 million users in the last eight years of its operations, the company has not been able to get the same sort of traction from the investors.

The company’s founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Able Joseph noted Aisle was not looking to raise any funding since 2017 as it had already reached a breakeven by then. Also, it was also especially difficult for the company to raise any capital as it works exactly opposite from the investors’ playbook.

While other dating apps have been designed to increase engagement, Aisle has been trying to place itself as a limited use dating app meant to be deleted. Joseph explained that they don’t want to be equated with casual dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and others as they want to get into more “high-intent dating” where people find their partners.

“We don’t want to be seen in the same bracket as Tinder and Bumble. These are gamified dating apps, why would anyone engineer an app where anyone can swipe left and right 100 times a day. You are basically taking away the scarcity and scarcity is important to keep human behaviour in check. So when you take away the scarcity, it’s quite natural for any users to misbehave and misuse the product. The casual dating apps intentionally do that for engagement and things like that,” he told Business Insider.

He further elaborated that Aisle wants people to find their partners and “never return [to the app] after that”. This is the reason why venture capital is not the answer for Aisle as their business model is not to keep users engaged for a longer period of time. Therefore, it was “far better” for Aisle to find a specific partner than to raise venture capital.

“While most of our competitors focused on engagement through gamification, we went against conventional wisdom and focused on churn. We optimised our products for our members to meet someone special and exit the platform. While this decision made it difficult to raise venture capital,” he added, highlighting that the success stories and word-of-mouth helped the company stay in the race.

Joseph mentioned that platforms like Tinder and Bumble may have been able to increase the engagement with the users, but the number of people meeting in real life is very limited. “Maybe in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai there are a bunch of people who are matching on casual dating apps and meeting offline, but if the whole of India that is not the story whatsoever.”

He believes that more Indians are looking to get into serious relationships, rather than participating in the hookup culture.

Even though Jeevansathi and Aisle are targeting people at the different stages of their life, the intent of both the platforms is to find a partner. The companies have been informally in touch with each other since 2016 to exchange market insights, but the conversation around acquisition started only four months ago, Joseph added.

The company has raised ₹2 crore to date, according to business intelligence platform Crunchbase. Over the last two years, the company has launched several other vernacular apps like ‘Arike’ for Malayalees, Anbe for Tamil and Neetho for Telugu audience.

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