Applied dating

Youngsters create an app for singles to find partners. Vipasha Sinha tries her luck with the product

January 18, 2014 12:20 pm | Updated May 19, 2016 11:39 am IST - Chennai:

Picture used for representation purpose only.

Picture used for representation purpose only.

A college-going youngster not very long ago, Rajat Rao relied on friends to figure out if the girl he fancied would requite his interest. Tired of this dependence, he eventually turned to technology for help.

Rajat, a college dropout, along with two ex-Googlers started Krush, a mobile app, to help single people like him.

Rajat says, “Krush is an app that works as a personal matchmaker. Once downloaded, it seeks your permission to access specific data on your Facebook account, such as age, location, likes, interests and activities.

It then matches the data with other users of the app who share your interests and worldview. In other words, those likely to be compatible with you. It sends a batch of fifteen potential names a day that you can ‘Like’ or ‘Skip’ anonymously.”

The user of the app has to be on Facebook, which rules out the chances of bogus accounts. “The entire process is safe and anonymous. Even if you ‘like’ someone, the other person cannot see who it is. Only if the two people like each other will the identity be revealed. Never is the phone number, exact location [except city] or other personal information is revealed.”

People are often cynical about the concept of online dating, especially women: what does he have to say about this.

“My younger sister and friends use this app. It is completely anonymous. No one will know you are on the app. People cannot search for you and it does not post anything on FB. The app also shows you those of your Facebook friends who are not on the app. We only suggest those people to the users with whom they have at least one mutual friend. If you report someone as a ‘creep’, we remove him from the system. The only information about you visible on the app is that which you have explicitly defined as public on Facebook.”

Krush can be downloaded from Google Play Store. It has already been downloaded over 2500 times in the past two weeks. It will also be available on Apple's App Store shortly.

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