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Dil Mil, a matchmaking app, has raised $2.7 Mn in its Pre-Series A round of funding from a clutch of investors, reported ET. Investors participated in this round include Nelstone Ventures, Transmedia Capital, Maiden Lane Ventures, CSC Upshot, Naval Ravikant (founder of Angel List), Kunal Shah, Sameer Parwani, and Vijay Ullal.
Dil Mil was founded in 2014 by KJ Dhaliwal, Sukhmeet Toor and Jacob Ilin. It is a matchmaking app that connects South Asians across the globe. The app also offers comprehensive user profiles with Facebook login and optional LinkedIn and Instagram integration. “Social discovery is turbocharged with our machine learning algorithms which is working to quantify human emotion and truly predict compatibility,” said KJ Dhaliwal, founder and CEO at Dil Mil.
The startup uses multi-source verification (use external data sources to verify if you are a real user or fake profile) and detailed partner preferences gives users the ability to search based on age, height, religion, community, education and occupation (the parents’ checklist). Potential matches can be in multiple countries simultaneously but a user can specify what country they want to see people from.
Currently, the app is free, however, there are certain paid products within the app. The paid products are monthly VIP subscription-based which unlocks more features and a la carte product that allows customers to purchase more likes called Dils.
“Most dating apps are trying to capture the short term relationship space similar to Tinder. As for us, we are not only connecting people locally but also are connecting NRIs and Indians. The number and quality of these transnational matches is unparalleled and gives us a unique position in the market,” said Dhaliwal.
The startup will use the raised capital to experiment and harness emerging technologies and expand the product offerings.
Apart from this, Dil Mil’s next step is to expand beyond text and allow users to better understand each other within the app before meeting in real life. The team is also working on facilitating video dates which will be rolling out VR dates shortly. The testing and surveys conducted by the company indicate that unlike with other dating apps, Dil Mil users will embrace video and VR technology.
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