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Dateiitians.com- A Unique Way To Connect

Edited By: on May 9, 2012

1. Tell us about your venture

 Ans: dateIITians is all about meeting and socializing with new geeky/techies/online people, viewing through their profiles and checking for your compatibility level with them. It is a small endeavor to make it easier for the geeks out there in finding their perfect life partner. It helps you do all those things that you do to get a date with someone, imitating the real life situation through online social networking means (which is basically online social dating), while sharing your information with others.
 2. Where are you based?
Bangalore, Karnataka
3. When was the venture started?
22 Jan 2012
4. What triggered you to start this venture?
 Ans: The idea emerged out of a normal discussion (back during our internship days) when we were discussing about each other’s girlfriends and one of us commented “Why don’t you start a special website where either IITians and others can hook up with each other?” After a long discussion, we thought why not go for it; it sounds like a good idea! Moreover, people see IITians to be total geeks, who don’t have any social life. This image needs to be changed!

As the idea originated for IITians, we fixed the name as dateIITians, a social dating site for IITians, where IITians and others can hook up with each other. The initial investment to implement the idea till now is 50,000 INR (Excluding human resource expenses).

 5. Tell us about your products/services.
 Ans: dateIITians offers a mix of social networking and dating, first of a kind of a social dating website. Users have to cross various levels to become a dating partner of someone. First, you have to add someone as your buddy, then you can request for flirting with him/her. If your flirt request gets accepted, you can express crush on that person. After expressing flirt/crush and a few days of chatting/messaging (maybe), you can propose that person if you really like him/her. All these levels are offered, integrated with a three level notification system about your social activities on the site; other features include comments, likes, dislikes, wall posts, applications, albums and photos upload etc.

We also offer premium services – becoming a featured member, video chatting, sending gifts to your loved ones, online advertising and web applications.

In future, we are thinking of expanding our services to creating professional pages for individuals and dateIITians mobile (for accessing the website on mobile based devices, etc.). There may be some more features like -

  • Video Chatting
  • Premium Profiles
  • Points Based System
  • Sending Gifts to loved ones
  • Entertainment / Games Applications
  • Mobile Based Applications for Social Media / Dating
  • Beauty Contest Live
  • Beauty Contest On ground
  • Locality Meetings
 6. Tell us something  about yourself?
 Layak Singh, a B.Tech. graduate in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, is the man who makes it happen. He is the head of Operations, Public Relations, Talent Search and Product Design of our startup. His philosophy is defined by investing in forward-thinking solutions with an eye toward technology and first-to-market advantages. Understanding that being first to market is a huge advantage, he directed energy toward achievements that positioned him ahead of competitors in emerging markets. He has an immense experience in supporting various individuals and organizations in tasks related to project management and creative problem solving! He has expertise in business development, networking and digital marketing as well as in operations management. He is the leader who keeps the team running with futuristic goals.
 Kinshuk Bairagi, a final year dual degree student of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, is the head of all the technology related stuff, like web development, writing algorithms, etc. He brings the very best of Indian ingenuity to our startup, with flair of creativity and problem solving. He has built countless web sites and custom applications, including web-based data gathering systems and full-blown mobile business systems. He is a troubleshooting master, keeping a critical eye on cross-browser compatibility issues and ensuring quality throughout our company’s developmental processes.
 Nikhil Kaushik, also a final year dual degree student of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, handles the business development work and the web layout designs. With a consistent and good academic track record and professional experience, he has the brains and experience to shape an idea from incubation to reality. His internships at various reputed organizations and startups in India had led him to get a pretty good understanding of working of a business and its management. He has a wide range of experience in varied fields. He strives for innovation and creativity in whatever he does.
 7. What is the market size you are trying to capture?
 Offerings Stake Holder
  1. IITs
  2. IIMs
  3. MIT
  4. Stanford
  5. Harvard
  6. NITs
  7. AIIMS + Other Medical Colleges
  8. Top Global  Universities
  9. Top Global Colleges
  10. Professional employees
  11. Entrepreneurs
  12. Other regional engineering colleges
  13. Other Management colleges
  14. Other regional universities

Ø  Which is almost a 300+ million targeted market

Current Status – Market Reach

Below are shown the statistics for dateIITians.com as per current Google analytics (for last 60 days). No publicity or any marketing company was hired by us for promotion.

  • 20k+ registered users
  • 700k+ page views
  • 35k+ unique visits
  • 5000+ daily unique views
  • 75% returning users
  • 20.02 minutes daily average time on site
  • 1500+ users down the line of verification
  • 5000+ daily login users
 8. Any more Expansion plans that you have.
 Ans: We are seeking a good investor right now, who will help us control our operations and development, so that we can focus more on the development and less on the financial and operational aspect. As soon as we get funding, we will hire some good people who have expertise in CSS, PHP & JavaScript coding and has significant experience in developing web applications. We are looking forward to collaborating with some organizations. We plan to launch all our premium services then.

 9. What are Sector specific challenges that you face.

Ans: We faced some problems, which implementing, checking out the feasibility and shaping the idea regarding how to integrate a dating website for IITians with a social dating website. However, due to rigorous efforts, we are able to come up with something that will be feasible to all. We also faced some algorithmic problems/ bugs while implementing the Three Level Notification System. But, Kinshuk nailed it all with all his vast expertise and interest in web development. But combined with Layak’s and Nikhil’s help, he was able to crack its backend framework, which was the most difficult task. In order to avoid the fake accounts we have implemented the 3 level of account verification to meet our standards and users expectations.

 10. Competitors? How are you different?
 DateIITians is the new definition of social networking cum social dating . So, there are no defined opponents. But, there will be short-term competitors due to their wide-spread existence for many years.

 Lavalife.com

 eHarmony.com

 Facebook

 Badoo.com

 Zoosk.com

 Fropper.com

 Google+

How we are different:

 First of all dateIITians is a social dating site and not a matrimonial site. We have a 3 level strict process for checking identities of people and we don’t accept any fake accounts. Identities are checked for each and every registered profile and then only his/her account is activated to enjoy the services offered by us. This is due to the fact that no one likes to date a fake person! Then, we have social networking features plus dating here; integrated with different levels of friendship that one person has to go through generally to find a perfect partner for himself/herself, imitating a real life situation. We have this Point Rating System ( to be released soon), according to which users get points based on the amount of interaction they have with their buddies on the site. They can redeem their points into cash and opt for either sending free gifts to their loved ones or convert their membership to premium one.

11. What would you like to say to budding entrepreneurs

  Our message to budding entrepreneurs is that it takes some time to shine but never quit. We are also an entrepreneur so still in the struggling phase but we believe that we can do so you can!
 12: What does your venture do as their CSR?
 NA
 13. How do you connect with the people?
We are moving to IITs, NITs, IIMs, and all other colleges as appointing our brand ambassador in these institutes to connect with the people. Also through social media marketing and online contest. Our plan is to organize some relationship based events to reach more people soon.
  • DateIITians-Logo
  • Layak Singh
  • Nikhil Kaushik
  • Nikhil Kaushik
  • Layak Singh
  • Kinshuk Bairagi
  • Kinshuk Bairagi.
Akshita Jain

About Akshita Jain

+Akshita Jain is a freelance journalist, an avid blogger and an entrepreneur. Writing is her passion and she loves to write about the youth and showcase their talent. She is the Co-founder of this Online magazine, Cupidspeaks.com and wishes to spread smiles around.

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