As a child, I fantasised about having a love story as romantic as my parents’. Straight out of a rom-com, they fell in love while working at the same hotel, sneaking around for secret late-night motorcycle rides and ice cream dates for months before breaking the news of their forbidden relationship to their parents. I loved the spontaneity of it all: two people who weren’t searching for love but happened to stumble across it anyway, who have stayed by each other’s sides more than thirty years later.
Today, I’m the same age as my parents were when they met. In my shoes, they would be getting married a year from now and having their first child in a few more. The degree to which our lives differ is laughable, especially in a world where romance seems to have taken a completely new shape. Modern love thrives through Instagram DMs and Tinder matches, rendering meet-cutes increasingly rare as the digital realm finds itself at the centre of our lives. How many people do you know who fell in love at the bus stop or in line at the grocery store? How many decide to settle down so quickly, holding no hesitation about the choice they’ve made? Perhaps we’re so busy looking at our phones that we forget to look at our surroundings, or maybe we’re just channelling our romantic yearning into a platform we’re confident could prove to be fruitful.
In the past 10 years, dating app usage has skyrocketed. As of 2023, 82.4 million Indians were on dating apps, marking a massive 293% increase compared to the 20 million recorded five years prior. It’s easy to understand why people are drawn to these platforms. Dating is as scary as it is exciting. It requires a level of confidence and an ability to accept rejection that is often overlooked. It makes sense, then, that people gravitate toward a digital helper when navigating their complicated love lives. Rejection is less scary when felt through a screen and love is easier to find when you’re searching amongst other people pining for it too.
The act of swiping left and right, shuffling through hundreds if not thousands of profiles to find one you like is not just convenient, but undeniably fun. Our brains receive little hits of dopamine as we confirm or deny our attraction to the glimpse of a person in front of us, adding an addictive edge to the dating app experience. Many people consider this a fault of modern dating, and to be honest, I agree with them. After all, the rapid back and forth of your thumb on the screen means you could be writing off the potential love of your life for something as trivial as an unflattering selfie or a corny pick-up line in their bio. But, when you think about it, is this really all that different from the Indian matchmaking model we’ve used for generations?
Arranged marriages were, and continue to be, contingent on the approval or rejection of a person’s qualities laid out on paper. Whether a couple is brought together by a hired matchmaker or by their family, their compatibility isn’t assessed by their real-life chemistry but by how they would conceptually fit together. In the same way, while dating apps allow us a measly glimpse into who a person truly is, the core characteristics you can glean from a profile can be enough to understand if the potential for love is there. While people in the West may write off Indian arranged marriages as archaic, their new dating obsession is a digital revitalisation of something that has proven successful for many generations. Similarly, despite the stigma against dating apps here, there frankly isn’t anything more Indian than an automated matchmaker.
Unfortunately, this digitised new model of matchmaking often continues to perpetuate the discrimination present in the Indian matchmaking system. Casteism, colourism, and socioeconomic discrimination are few of many issues that continue to be prevalent for online daters. From Tinder bios blatantly stating “Brahmins/fair skin only” to apps designed to match people based on their caste, like the now defunct Jodable, our societal faults are reflected in our online dating habits. As users, we have to consider whether our swipes are based on personal taste or unconscious bias in order to foster greater inclusivity and work towards the progress we desperately need.
This isn’t to say that true, pure love is not achievable through a dating app. The complex social dynamics prevalent in the realm of online dating need to be accounted for, but it is also possible for us to evolve. Though progress moves at a snail’s pace, it moves all the same. So for those of us seeking love, hope is by no means lost.
When now-fiances Nitin and Ruple matched on the homegrown dating app Dil Mil, they each found ‘the one’ within just a few months on the platform. Launched just over 10 years ago, Dil Mil has already garnered 4 million users and led to over 30 million matches, making it the world’s leading South Asian-specific dating app. Dil Mil is used across the globe, available to both the diaspora and users within India.
Vasavi Kumar, Dil Mil’s Senior Global Marketing Manager, emphasised two key points when explaining what sets Dil Mil apart from competitor dating apps: cultural alignment and shared relationship expectations. “When someone chooses our platform, they're making a conscious decision to connect with others who understand and value South Asian heritage,” she said, highlighting the issue of cultural discordance some in the diaspora may experience on other platforms. She also cited Dil Mil’s reputation, summed up by their tagline “find something real”, as a factor in their userbase’s homogeneity in seeking long-lasting love.
Unlike Hinge, Tinder, or Bumble, Dil Mil’s matching process doesn’t prioritise location. Rather, the app uses community-oriented filters to connect members of the South Asian diaspora with like-minded individuals from across the globe. While some people online have called the app out for using caste-specific filters in the past, Kumar assured us that the app now only centres community and religion in the hopes of fostering a more inclusive space while connecting users based on cultural common ground.
Based in Chicago, Nitin joined Dil Mil in the hopes of finding a life partner, knowing that he hoped to settle down with someone who shared his cultural background. Ruple, on the other hand, was encouraged to make a profile after her brother met his life partner on the app a year prior. The pair matched in January of 2021, and after a few weeks of chatting, planned a 30-minute Facetime date which unexpectedly lasted 4 hours. “Our nights thereafter led to calls until even 4-5 am where we got to know each other as best friends and study mates,” Nitin told us. There’s something beautiful about an online connection, brought ironically closer by the distance that pushes couples to talk and foster deep emotional ties even before meeting in person.
“Neither of us can recall life without each other – as cheesy as it sounds, we are each other’s halves. All of my weaknesses, she has as her strengths and vice versa. We truly are each others’ soul mates.”Nitin Goel for Homegrown
When Nitin and Ruple finally met in person a month and a half after matching, Nitin said it was “love at first sight.” She took the train from St. Louis to Chicago, where Nitin greeted her with his “nicest red outfit, prepared a red cranberry mojito for her entrance, and bought her a preserved rose for the occasion.” Four years later, the couple has this same rose on display and is planning their wedding, which is to take place in six months.
“The woman I had always dreamed of winning over was finally in front of me, and I couldn’t screw it up. It was the biggest interview of my life.”Nitin Goel for Homegrown
For Nitin and Ruple, Dil Mil acted as a middle ground between the traditional, marriage-focused Indian dating approach and our contemporary dating landscape. Unlike with a typical arranged marriage, the pair were able to digitally explore and date freely while still moving towards their longer-term goals in what Kumar describes as “an experience that seamlessly bridges tradition with modernity” and “a testament to the evolving nature of South Asian dating culture.” Needless to say, Nitin and Ruple recommend Dil Mil to anyone seeking love. “Dil Mil changed our lives,” Nitin insisted, particularly as he never would have met the love of his life if not for the app.
Happy couple Soumik and Piali met on a different digital platform, citing the increasingly popular app Aisle as the beginning of their blossoming, persistent love. The homegrown app is steadily rising on India’s download charts, attracting users with its slogan “Nothing casual about this dating app.” While Aisle is available across India, the company also has a network of subsidiary dating app options for specific communities, including Arike for Malayalis, Anbe for Tamils, and Keene for Kannadigas.
Soumik told Homegrown that he joined the app after growing frustrated by the expectation of casual flings on Tinder. He was looking for true love, and a short three months after joining Aisle, he found it in his now-wife Piali.
That’s not to say that Soumik and Piali felt like instant soulmates; “Well, we didn't click immediately as we had different opinions,” Soumik said, “But on the other hand there were plenty of things which made us keep talking to each other. It was really great meeting someone who shares the same ideology and mindset.” Interestingly, their experience reads like a classic first date. You never know exactly what you’re going to get, and there’s always some give and take in the process of understanding the person in front of you. The digital nature of their conversations didn’t remove from their depth, and if anything, offered them both space and time as they grew to learn how the other communicated.
Their relationship’s turning point came with the tragic passing of Soumik’s mother, which came soon after the two had started talking. For someone else, such a drastic life event might mean the end of a budding connection. But not for Soumik and Piali. As he leaned on her for emotional support, their feelings for one another only grew deeper. A month later, when the couple finally met in person, everything clicked into place. “It was magical, we both had waited for this moment for so long.” After meeting on the rooftop of his apartment building, they ordered pizza and walked around their garden– all in all, a pretty regular date. But as Soumik recounts this day, he remembers every little detail. “Even the moon was very special that day as it had a small star placed just under it.” This is the type of love you tell future generations about, the kind that people will yearn for in the decades to come.
“I still feel butterflies in my stomach while writing down my memories.”Soumik Banerjee for Homegrown
Digital dating continues to be a point of contention, in part over valid concerns about discriminatory judgments, and more popularly, for the stigmatised notion that love with online origins is somehow inferior to the traditional norm. The former point is one that developers, users, and society at large must acknowledge and change. The latter, as seen by the homegrown love stories above, is simply untrue. Despite its complications, dating apps can open a new world of opportunities for you to find the right one for you. In a country boasting a population of almost one and a half billion, the likelihood of ‘the one’ existing in your periphery is minuscule. The chances of you finding your happiness then grow tenfold as your dating pool expands.
That’s not to say that love no longer happens organically, just that the evolution of our romantic landscape should be considered an opportunity rather than a detriment. Love is not a coincidence, and despite the famous saying that it comes when you least expect it, you have the agency to take the reins and explore the thousands of options a mere swipe away. There is something profoundly beautiful about taking fate into your own hands and seeking the love you deserve.
While meet-cutes like that of my parents may grow obsolete, parents twenty years down the line will have their own fun stories to share with their kids. Chances are, they’ll be cracking jokes about the silly first message their partner sent them or expressing the relief they felt over not being catfished. Love, no matter its origin story, is love all the same.
If you enjoyed reading this, here’s more from Homegrown:
From Dating Apps To Sex Toys: How Mumbai Is Embracing A Quiet Sexual Revolution
Clock Blocked: How Time Became An Avenue Of Resistance In Colonial Bombay
'Khush': How A 1991 Documentary Captured The Queer Voices Of South Asian Diaspora