Anbe, a vernacular dating app by Aisle, is aimed at Tamil speakers

From biryani to Thalapathy, expect topics and conversations related to all things Tamil on Anbe, a Tamil-language dating app created by the folks over at Aisle

July 28, 2021 04:48 pm | Updated July 30, 2021 12:20 pm IST

If you are my thayirsadam , I’d like to be your oorga . How is that for an introduction? On Anbe, the new vernacular dating app from Aisle, expect bios, topics and conversations related to all things Tamil. From Thala to Thalapathy, Thalapakatti biryani to Chettinad chicken.

Anbe (meaning dear in Tamil), launched last week, focusses on the global Tamil community. It comes four months after Arike, the Malayalam dating app from the same brand.

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“With Arike, 25% of the revenues came from NRIs in the Middle Eastern region. And we had not promoted anywhere outside Kerala,” says Able Joseph, founder and CEO of Aisle. While Aisle overall has six and a half million users (in places as obscure as Azerbaijan), 1,80,000 out of them are users of the vernacular apps, he says. The vernacular apps are in English but Able is also thinking about the possibility of regional texts.

Though fairly new, “Anbe gets 800 users on a daily basis,” says Able. The majority of these users are from Chennai and Coimbatore for now, with a few in Singapore and Malaysia. There are those who log on because they are currently living in a different state, or country, and miss the local lingo of Tamil Nadu.

Zhulfia A, a retail professional, who lived in Chennai for nine years and is currently based in Bengaluru, says one of the reasons she signed up was, “I want to keep in touch with Chennai.” She says Anbe has got the essence right, with Tamil tags, slang and references. She is glad she gets to discuss such city-specific things with people who are either in Chennai or were part of the city. “Just the other day I was discussing Nungambakkam, Khader Nawaz Khan Road, Old Madras Baking Company and Junior Kuppanna biryani,” she laughs.

The app has interesting topics that can be used as conversation starters to break the ice

The app has interesting topics that can be used as conversation starters to break the ice

In order to break the ice, the app also has prompts like ‘Mamoothy, Mohanlal or None of the Above’; ‘All is Well when...’; or ‘My favourite road trip would be...’.

Zhulfia feels that other than these features, the app is in-depth with regards to information like zodiac, personal choices like having kids, if the other person likes dogs, or when they plan to settle down. “It also has details like salary,” says Able, who prior to launching Aisle in 2014, was on every dating app trying to understand the market and other aspects related to dating and matrimony apps. A lot of couples who met on Aisle ended up marrying each other and they share their success stories with us, he says. As for Anbe, while a lot of interesting conversations are happening online, for a meaningful relationship to materialise they need to meet offline, once the pandemic situation gets better.

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