Fika - the AI Connection app, has in only 2 years accumulated >2M downloads and is now on a fast-paced journey to expand further out in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the world.
@ceciliaatraan Because it does not work in our country. I found out that most of dating apps based on western philosophy. When a country is conservative, it did not work much there. I tried both bumble and tinder. Experienceiwas not up to the mark.
@robat_das I do agree that the Western Apps are not directly suitable for example the Asian market, and that they generally have a very high stigma surrounding them. That's why we're creating Fika for the Asian market to make it more suitable and less stigmatized.
For what reasons did you feel that the experience was not up to mark?
I didn't know this was a dating app. What do you think about completely platonic social connections?
A lot of men that become financially successful really struggle to make "bro" friends that they can hang out with. What's your opinion on solving that problem?
@kingromstar Yeah so, it's something that we have been discussing a lot, and the long term goal would be to hone into the whole world of friendships as a lot of people today are using dating apps to try to find friends, especially in Vietnam. Our long-term misson is also to build genuine connections, regardless if they would be platonic or romantic. However, this requires a little more than a copy and paste of a dating app design since friends finding is a little different.
I have tried out Bumble BFF previously that has the exact same format as Bumble Date, but what I needed from that was not to find someone who looked in a certain way with a certain profile, but rather someone who would match my energy and be open to meet new people. And also setting up meetings like a 1-1 date also felt weird, and I believe it would've been better for the algorithm to put us together into groups of 3-4 people to make it more relaxed. Also, when swiping on guys, there was always this thought in the back of my mind which questioned the intentions of "does he REALLY only want to be friends?". And also the feeling of being ghosted as a friend was almost worst than in dating. So yeah, a lot of things to think about.
Therefore, I believe this is something that needs to be worked on and thought about more thoroughly down the line. Besides, I really do believe that something like this would benefit from merging with friends finding communities on Facebook, as well as event sites etc so that it could be a place to go if you're ever feeling lonely and just want to find some people to hang out with right there and then.
Wow! 2M downloads in 2 years - that's amazing! What kind of unique features have contributed to such success? Are there any plans to make Fika even more accessible to other markets, such as Latin America or Africa? Looking forward to
@itsawaisyounas The first two years of our success has been built on a strong brand building strategy with a strong founder story and a smart way of using KOLs and performance marketing. We've always focused on creating a community with only real and verified users while also having the personality tests and zodiac signs which are elements that are tailored for the SEA market.
As of now, our focus is on SEA, since the cultural barrier and geographical barrier are smaller than those of Latin America and Africa, but will definitely be up for consideration in the future. However, we cannot set a timeline as of yet.
@fas4wd I see. That's why we have enforced mandatory verification where everyone needs to go through the verification stage within 48 hours in order to keep using the app, and if they don't, they will be hidden from people's discoveries. This will minimize the amount of low-quality profiles, and especially female fake profiles.
@chtrbx_ai I completely agree. We usually say that we want to help the users understand who they are, what they are looking for and then connect them with the right people. So moving forward we want to find more and more ways for the user to understand themselves, through different types of personality tests, attachment styles, love languages, etc. And then based on that we can use data and AI to match people to each other who would be good for each other on paper. Naturally, that does not automatically mean that people will click, but I do believe it is a good start.
@odukoya_adeola Is it not useful due to finding a partner already? Churn and retention rate is usually something that is difficult to maintain for apps like ours, however, if people churn because they have found a meaningful connection and want to exclusively focus on that, it is a success!
I do believe that there is a conspiracy that dating apps actually tries to make the algorithm worse so that people will stay for a longer period of time and spend more money. However, I can assure you that it is not the way we do it, as our mission is really to connect people in a meaningful way with the help of AI.
@aytan_worldy I do agree that this is something that is very unethical and needs to be solved somehow. We're taking it one step at a time though and will begin with ensuring that all users on our app are real people so that fake profiles and catfish are minimized.
Detecting lies on people's profiles is definitely much more difficult which is mostly possible if asking for official documents, where it will then come down to a question of storing personal information, something that historically has been and still is a sensitive subject. Do you possibly have any thoughts on how this can be executed?
Fika