“This is my last Holi before marriage. My next Holi will be with Imran. I have been waiting for this moment for a very long time…” says Anu Multani’s post on Facebook. She’s a 30-year-old polio-affected woman from Gujarat. She met her fiancé Garana Imran M through Inclov, a matchmaking app. Imran is also physically-challenged and the both are set to get married on May 13. “After trying a lot of other matrimonial portals, I found Anu on Inclov. I could not have asked for a better match,” says Imran’s post.
Inclov or Inclusive Love offers a free space for people with disabilities and health disorders to find love and commitment. “We launched in January and the response has been terrific,” says Kalyani Khona, the co-founder of Inclov and a consultant at the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. “Anu Multani, who waited for six years to find a life partner, found one within 10 days of the launch. We have over 2,000 users actively using Inclov to look for a date or life partner. Anu and Imran getting married in May 2016 is our first success story.”
Inclov aims to provide equal opportunities to the disabled who are looking for love. “Other matrimonial services are inaccessible to the visually-impaired and hearing-impaired. Due to lack of customised filters and mismatched expectations, the churn rate is higher. Inclov employs methods that match people based on their level of independence, cure availability, medical condition and lifestyle choices and so on,” she explains.
The app helps users read profiles through mobile screen readers. Security measures like mobile verification, e-mail verification, and in-chat feature ensures safety. “We also support users with upper body immobility. A video-calling feature is in the pipeline to address the needs of the hearing impaired. We want to build them as a confident community, create opportunities where they can meet, date and understand and find their soul mate.”
Kalyani says the inclusive matchmaking app was developed by a visually-impaired person. The Inclov team works out of Delhi. Though it’s a free app now, they plan to adopt a subscription model later.
It is not just about matchmaking between people with disabilities. On Valentine’s Day, the Inclov team organised a date for two of its users – Sagar, who is visually challenged, and Nadiya, who has no disability. The team also organised meet-up programmes in Delhi, Gurgaon and Chennai, which were highly successful. “Right now, our focus is to help them find a life partner.
In the future, we are also looking at assisted living where we come up with restaurant listings that are friendly to the physically challenged, hold movie screenings exclusively for them, etc. Of the 1.2 billion people with disabilities worldwide, 600 million people in the 20-60 age group are single. We want to change this with Inclov,” says Kalyani.
The app is available on Google Playstore
To know more, visit: http://www.inclov.com/
