Online dating has been a tough business to crack in India. This can be gauged from the financial performance of TrulyMadly. While the company has turned profitable in FY18, its revenue has suffered a 50 per cent dip during the same fiscal.
With Rs 2.3 lakhs worth of profit, TrulyMadly has posted a revenue of Rs 3.61 crore in FY18 as compared to Rs 7.21 crore in the preceding fiscal. According to RoC filings with MCA, it also controlled expenses by about 51.6 per cent to Rs 3.59 crore in the last fiscal from Rs 7.32 crore in FY17.
Subscription has contributed over 54.2 per cent of overall revenue in FY18 for the Helion Ventures-backed firm. Its revenue from paid service stood at Rs 1.95 crore which is 69.8 per cent up from the previous fiscal.
Founded by Sachin Bhatia, Hitesh Dhingra, and Rahul Kumar, TrulyMadly repackages the whole process of dating by customising it for a new generation. It primarily lets singles discover each other through shared interests and personality profiles.
Besides subscription, the Gurgugram-based company has made Rs 53.27 lakhs from advertising. With Rs 1.88 crore, employee benefits expense accounted the largest expense for the company in FY18. It’s a 65.3 percent reduction in FY18 as this figure stood at Rs 5.41 crore in FY17.
Apart from subscription, the firm makes money via ‘Select’ (meant for people above 26 years old). It lets date hunters interact with the TrulyMadly team to understand them to find a perfect match across 30 cities.
The company competes with Tinder, Hyderabad-based QuackQuack, Woo, Priyanka Chopra-backed Bumble and a handful of others. However, the real competition for TrulyMadly is Tinder which claimed growth of about 400 per cent on a yearly basis since its launch in 2015 in the country.
