The Business of Belonging: Inside India’s Queer Dating Economy

“Insaan ko insaan dhoondhna padta hai.” (A human has to search for another human) 

The line may sound simple, almost obvious. Yet it captures something essential about the digital age. Technology has made it easier to locate people. It has not made it easier to understand them. 

Two decades ago, one of the first public figures to pull queer identity into India’s mainstream was Manvendra Singh Gohil, the prince of Rajpipla in Gujarat. When he came out in the mid-2000s, it made national headlines. And back then, visibility of that kind was rare and risky. Since then, the social terrain has shifted. Queer representation now surfaces more often in films, workplaces, and most powerfully, online. 

Today, for many users, connection often begins on a phone screen. Dating apps map cities into dense digital grids, and logging in becomes the first step toward finding someone who understands your lived reality. Around that search, an industry has grown fast. India’s online dating market is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, driven by younger users, cheap data, and a growing comfort with online relationships. 

 Globally, the numbers are staggering. LGBT Capital estimates the annual spending power of LGBTQ consumers at roughly $4.7 trillion, across a population of nearly 388 million. By any market measure, queer identity is no longer marginal. It is a serious economic force. 

And yet, new platforms continue to launch. 

The recent launch of Polo by Bengaluru-based community platform Kutumb sits inside this paradox. On paper, it steps into territory already controlled by global giants such as Grindr, Tinder and Bumble. Dating apps are classic network businesses, meaning users tend to stay where the largest pool already exists. In such markets, new entrants rarely succeed by scale alone.  

But Polo’s entry suggests the opportunity may lie elsewhere. 

In India, dating apps often perform roles beyond romance. For users who are not openly queer at home or at work, these platforms double as discovery tools and social maps. Sometimes, they offer something simpler: reassurance. Opening an app isn’t always about finding a partner. It can be about finding proof that you are not alone and locating yourself within a larger and unseen community. 

This broader use also exposes the limits of global platforms. Scale brings activity, but it does not always bring familiarity or trust. Conversations begin easily but fade quickly. Users move between multiple apps rather than settling into one. What appears from the outside to be a large unified market often behaves internally like a set of smaller, fragmented communities.  

Brand consultant Harish Bijoor argues that this fragmentation creates space for new entrants. Global apps will continue to dominate because of network effects, he adds, but local platforms may still find relevance by focusing on specific geographies or communities. Being smaller can sometimes be an advantage if it allows a platform to feel closer to users rather than simply larger than competitors.  

From a business standpoint, this is a difficult path. Dating apps operate like marketplaces. Their usefulness depends on liquidity, meaning enough active users in one place to sustain interaction. Without that density, retention drops quickly and users drift back to established platforms. India’s historically low willingness to pay for social apps adds another constraint. Subscription revenues remain modest, forcing platforms to rely on advertising, premium features, or indirect monetisation. 

Because of this, many industry observers believe the long-term opportunity may lie beyond dating itself. Across Indian cities, LGBTQ communities already operate through overlapping networks that include events, social groups, advocacy spaces and informal marketplaces. Platforms that embed themselves in these ecosystems could expand into content, services, or commerce, turning identity into a broader business model. As Bijoor notes, what begins as dating often evolves into something larger if the platform survives long enough.  

Seen in this light, Polo’s launch says less about competition among apps and more about the stage the market has reached. The first phase of India’s queer digital economy was about visibility, proving that people could find each other online. The next phase may be about sustainability, figuring out which platforms can convert attention into loyalty and loyalty into revenue.  

People may now be easier to find than before. The harder task for India’s queer tech economy is still the same one the line suggests at the beginning about one has to search to find a truly human person. 

Finding a person is simple. Building something meaningful around that search is the real business challenge.