Novel matchmaking venture brings together people with disability looking for life partners
Inclov (inclusive love), an online matchmaking app, has come as a manna from heaven for the disabled looking for love. An online version of its predecessor agency, Wanted Umbrella, Inclov was launched by Kalyani Khona and Shankar Srinivasan in 2015.
"I was disheartened by the lack of choice in the market. There was no personal experience to draw my emotions from, but I could empathise. I also wanted to carve a niche for myself," Khona said.
According to the 2001 census, over 21 million people in India suffer from one or the other form of disability. That accounts for roughly 2.1 per cent of the population. Among the total number of people with disability in the country, 12.6 million are men and 9.3 million are women.
Wanted Umbrella started out in 2014 with 600 registered users. By 2016, Inclov had 6,000 users. "We wanted to move forward with the time and technology. We couldn't cope with the demand offline, so we went digital," Khona said. When asked to measure her success in terms of the number of matches, Khona replied, "We can't say for sure, there are so many."
Anu Multani, a rifle shooter, was one of the pre-registered members on Inclov. Struck by polio at a young age, Multani had been looking for a soulmate for almost eight years and was close to giving up. Understandably, the medalist was hesitant to dive into the world of online dating.
"Before we launched the app, we were trying to convince a few users to pre-register," Khona said. Her business partner Srinivasan's power of persuasion worked and Multani signed on. To her own amazement, Multani found her "special" match in Imran within 10 days of the app's launch. By May 2016, barely five months later, the two were married.
"I had been looking for a life partner for years. Within the first week of Inclov's launch, I found a man who is simple, caring, and willing to look after my needs," the 30-year-old stated in her testimonial on the website. Imran gave a similar testimonial.
Khona attributes their venture's success to the multi-dimensional approach to the business of online dating. "We hold events offline, where our users can come and meet each other," she said. And the fact that people are naturally attracted to the idea of acceptance among like-minded people who share the same social stigma also helped, she further said.
"There are nearly sixty million single people with disability, looking for a partner. A pen and paper approach cannot handle the magnitude of this problem," Khona said.
During the building of the novel app, feedback was taken from differently-abled users. For example, Inclov has integrated the talkback feature for the visually-impaired. There is an added feature of textual descriptions of images as well. There are special menus for those with upper mobility issues, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and voice command powered solutions for those with cerebral palsy.
In August 2015, Inclov registered on Wishberry, a crowdfunding platform, to raise Rs five lakh, and ended up getting Rs 6.5 lakh. The money was used to upgrade the app. The new version — Inclov 2.0 — will be launched later this month.
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