India is Fifth Fastest Growing Dating App Market Globally

India is now among the fastest-growing dating app markets worldwide, thanks to a growing young population of singles and their changing attitudes towards dating.

In terms of year-over-year growth, India emerged as the fifth largest market in dating app spending in 2022, according to a new study by data.ai Intelligence. Researchers found that Indian users spent $31 million more in 2022 than they did in 2021 despite economic factors like inflation that affect consumer spending.

Match Group, Bumble, and other major dating app companies have made a big investment in India, hoping to capitalize on this attractive market which now brings in millions of dollars in revenue each year to dating app companies.

While there’s been scrutiny of the safety of dating apps lately, with major markets in Europe and Australia demanding more features to lessen risk to users, the dating app market itself is still growing. According to Daze Info, last year dating app users spent a record $5.9 billion for premium features on apps, up from $5.3 billion in 2021, and up from $3.1 billion before the pandemic. The premium features have been lucrative for the industry as a whole, with users paying to get more views, likes, messages and boosts each month.

The U.S. remains the strongest market with the highest spend for dating apps, although in 2022 consumers here spent considerably less on dating apps due to fears of inflation and economic slowdown. This has caused concern among investors, especially for Match Group which saw its first decline in the last quarter of 2022. Still, the dating app market in the U.S. hit an all-time high of $2.5 billion in 2022 despite the slowdown in growth overall, according to Daze Info.

The report also revealed that Tinder, Bumble and Hinge were the top three dating apps in terms of in-app spending.

Other interesting findings in the report include that globally, dating apps reached a record high of 1.9 billion downloads in 2022, an increase of 18.8 percent year-over-year. Time spent on dating apps reached an all-time high as well, with people worldwide spending 10 billion hours on them in 2022, up from 7 billion in 2019.

The U.S. still tops the market in terms of downloads and time spent on them, too. Downloads grew to 148 million in 2022, up 10.4 percent year-over-year. And U.S. dating app users spent 670 million hours on them in 2022, up 11.7 percent year-over-year.