US based mobile dating app Tinder has launched operations in India, its first international office, and appointed Taru Kapoor as its India head. Kapoor will be based in Delhi and lead the country operations for the company. She will also focus on establishing Tinder in India, steering user growth and increase local engagement by customisation.

Kapoor’s LinkedIn profile indicates that she’s been working with Tinder since August 2015. She joins Tinder from Harvard Business School, where she pursued an MBA for 2 years. Before that, she worked as an intern at Pocket Gems for a short while, an investment analyst with Sequoia Capital India for over 2 years and as an associate at the Boston Consulting Group for almost 2 years.

10 billion matches so far

Tinder was launched in 2012 and operates across 196 countries. As of now, the company claims to make 26 million matches every day, and has processed 10 billion matches to date. According to an October 2014 NYT report, Tinder claimed to process more than 1 billion left and right swipes every day. Then, it also claimed to process more than 12 million matches since its launch. The same report stated that Tinder users logged into the app an average of 11 times every day. While women spent about 8.5 minutes swiping during a single session, men spent 7.2 minutes, adding up to 90 minutes every day.

2015: A year of features

– In November last year, Tinder added, what it called the two most requested features to user profiles: namely job and education, which it sourced from Facebook.

– In September, the company launched Super Like, where users could swipe up to kind of upvote a user to make them more prominent during swiping by displaying a blue coloured footer and icon.

– In July, the company rolled out Verified Profiles, where a blue tick would appear next to authentic profiles of public figures, celebs and athletes etc; while integrating Instagram in April. In June, it launched Moments where users could upload and share pictures with their matches.

– In March last year, the company launched Tinder Plus, a paid feature where users could access users from global locations beyond their current radius. Rewind let you undo your last swipe to change it.

Competition: In India, Tinder competes with TrulyMadly, OkCupid (also owned by Tinder parent Match Group), Woo, iCrushiFlush, Matchify and Plenty of Fish etc.

Also read: Tinder dating in Delhi: “I right swipe everybody” – Scroll.in

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