8 minute read
Tanvi Gupta Takes You Back To The Old World
by SEEMA
TANVI GUPTA
TAKES YOU BACK TO THE OLD WORLD CHARM OF COURTSHIP
ABHIJIT MASIH
The dating experiences of Tanvi Gupta, a former product manager at Meta and the founder and CEO of SwoonMe, led to the idea of a voice-first dating app. Gupta says she hopes to help people experience those butterflies in the stomach through SwoonMe, an idea for a startup that came to her when she fell in love.
Numerous other dating apps are picture-based, where you look at one or few images of people and make splitsecond decisions. SwoonMe, Gupta’s brainchild, gives you the ability to conceal your identity behind an avatar until you feel confident enough to reveal your face to the other person. It harks back to old-school romance and courtship, which often began with a simple conversation. It allows for the joys of experiencing those butterflies in the stomach, provides mystery and intrigue, and lets one form a mental sketch of the person behind the voice.
Gupta moved to the US from Patiala when she was just 16 and studied at
Tanvi Gupta with her husband Vivek
Carroll University before doing her MBA at Marquette University. She moved to New York City and worked in a few financial institutions on Wall Street till she met her husband, Vivek, a techie from Silicon Valley, on a night out with friends. Before she met Vivek, she followed the common method of finding a date – swiping her phone. She had about eight or nine dating apps on her phone at that time. The only thing bothering her was the constant pressure of looking good. Not that it’s a bad thing. Obviously, everyone wants to look good, but she found it gross to be judged in a split second. She didn’t want to be judged solely on physical appearance. Thus the idea for a voice-first avatar-based dating app came to her. She spoke to SEEMA about her journey.
You moved to the US when you were just a teenager, tell us about the time and your education?
I moved here on my own. I did not have any relatives in Wisconsin. Still not many Indians there, mainly a very White place. I went to Carroll University and then I got my MBA in Wisconsin as well – from Marquette University. And after that, I moved to New York City to work on Wall Street. Now my family comes here to
visit. My brother is here with me, who is also the cofounder and CTO of SwoonMe. My parents visit. My mom has actually been here for six months now.
It must have been a challenge, coming here at that age, trying to adjust, to find your identity?
I came, actually to the dorm. So it’s wasn’t like, I have to go buy my housing, food and things like that. I came to like a typical American experience of being in dorms with other girls. I was just excited. I’ve always been very open to new things and doing things out of my comfort zone ever since I was young. I see that has played out throughout my life. It just feels like it’s a way to grow. Not that I was thinking so deep at that time, was just exciting and fun getting out of the house. I think it was a little bit of a hard adjustment when it came to food. But I made friends like very quickly. There were a lot of international students from other countries. It didn’t feel hard in terms of finding friends, but it’s a little bit of adjustment, when you go out of your home.
From Wall Street you moved to Facebook. Tell us about working for Meta?
I had been at Wall Street working for big banks. And then I was a consultant briefly, again, at banks and then I worked at Meta for three years. I had been on Messenger, and Instagram direct, purely on the consumer side, building products, understanding what our users want, the psychology of why they use this, how should they use this? What should we build, all of that, very much product oriented. The most instrumental fun experience that I’ve had in my career was at Facebook. It is a dream job if it works for you, and it was working for me. Really loved it.
Leaving the dream job at Facebook must have been a massive decision, a risk perhaps. So what made you do it?
I’ve always want to get out of my comfort zone and grow. I felt like I wanted to do something of my own because when I would listen to Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg) speak, when I would listen to his Q and A’s and how Facebook operated and how he started, I really would get inspired. I just felt, when you create a company, you do a startup or whatever you start, there’s bound to be mistakes. Nobody knows until you do it practically, until you do it right.
Meeting your husband and those initial days of courtship led to the idea of SwoonMe. Tell us how you met Vivek and how it led to the formation of your company?
I actually met my husband. In New York City, I was out one night, you know, after work, and he was also out. We just exchanged numbers after having like a nice conversation and sharing a drink. And then we started talking on the phone. Interestingly, like a lot on the phone! When he went back to California, it really started when we were talking on the phone. That’s when I felt that a voice-first platform made sense. It was never really about exchanging photos or anything like that. It was just like really connecting, based on shared ideologies. There’s so much you can learn about a person through the voice. It contributes to enhance dating, real life like experience. So, like, I’m talking to you on the phone right now. And you could tell so much about me, right? And as I’m talking I get to know so much about you, I feel like I want to keep talking to you, somebody I want to share things with.
You mentioned you used to have a number of dating apps on your phone. What does SwoonMe offer that sets it apart from all the others?
All other dating apps in the market right now – the leading players – like Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid – they’ve been around for so long and they are all picture-based. You take one photo or a few photos, some may be filtered, and people are just looking at that and making their split-second decision. But SwoonMe is a voice-first Avatar based dating app that creates an opportunity for singles to date in the metaverse. Sure, love is blind. But I also know from that there are some people that have certain requirements when it comes to comes to
A glimpse of SwoonMe
finding a mate. So I thought we have to show some aspect of somebody’s face. An avatar could tell a lot about a person’s appearance, just not everything. There is some element of mystery. We want to be just like in real life that you would meet somebody at a party, at a bar, in a workplace. The Avatar is actually an opportunity for Swooners to visualize one another without being superficial or judgmental. They can even personalize these avatars, which can be quite fun.
Is the app free?
Right now the platform is totally free. That’s because we wanted to build critical mass before we monetize. We have a really good product. Our engagement is about 18 minutes per day per user on the platform. Our retention is pretty great – 30-day retention is at about 20%, which is pretty great for a dating app.
Right now, we are raising funding so we can scale in terms of organic as well as add the ad based users.
Which have been the countries that have been most receptive in terms of your base of Swooners?
We haven’t actually launched globally; we’re just working on smoothing a couple of different things. Then we plan to launch mostly in all Englishspeaking countries. But we are live here in the U.S., Canada and India. The most receptive people are in the U.S. and Canada, the reason being that people are very open and not hesitant to record their voice because there’s no language barrier. English is their first language, whereas in India, people are hesitant to record their voice notes in Hindi or their native language. They want to do so in English and they may not speak it so well.
How does your platform work in favor of women?
Women are afraid of stalkers. They’re afraid somebody will come out to them, or get to know their profile, or that their families might get to know. Women in India are uploading – on these other picture based platforms – things like leg photos, pictures of [actor] Katrina Kaif. We [at SwoonMe] give that security because it’s so private and safe. They can generate an avatar and then we give them the option to reveal an avatar during a one-on-one chat. That actually empowers female users to find love, while maintaining privacy and integrity of their identity. And we take integrity issues very seriously, like protecting users from spam, reporting bad profiles, and we do a lot of back-end work to analyze profiles and remove bad actors. This platform actually works for women, because of the safety and privacy that we provide that other platforms do not at the moment.
