How A Platform For Adultery Found A New Market In India

Back in 2024, in the glut of documentaries that were making their way into our streaming platforms, one stood out. Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, the three-part documentary series that chronicled the fallout of the 2015 data breach that occurred with the platform whose tagline reads ‘Life is short. Have an affair’, released on Netflix and became an instant hit.

It may have been old news. But for many, this was the first time they encountered the story in all its messy and salacious details. The personal information of somewhere between 32 to 37 million married individuals who were on the platform for affairs – and the details included names, emails, messages and photos – got leaked. Reputations were scorched, marriages fell apart, and some suicides were also linked to the leak. The series, which told the story of that event through employee interviews and the impact that breach had on individuals and couples who were on the platform, skewered many of the presumptions we have on marriages and also served as a cautionary tale.

And yet in the weeks after the release of that series, in the offices of Ashley Madison in Canada, which has survived and re-branded itself since that data breach, the higher ups noticed something unusual. Although Ashley Madison hadn’t put any significant effort to grow the platform in India, it began to notice a rapid growth in the number of sign-ups in the country. By 2024, India rose to become the country with the sixth highest number of sign-ups for Ashley Madison. The next year, it would rise to the third after the US and Brazil. “I wouldn’t say I was necessarily surprised, given how we had seen such a significant level of interest with zero support and zero presence to have India rank sixth. [It] indicated there was interest in the market,” Paul Keable, Ashley Madison’s chief strategy officer, says referring to the platform’s explosive growth in the user base in India. “The only thing I would say I was surprised [by, was] how quickly it rose up the ranks to become No. 3 in less than a year.”

According to Keable, the Netflix series played an important role in this. The show might have served as a cautionary tale for many, but for quite a few others in countries like India it led to the discovery of a platform that they would be interested in using. “The Netflix documentary exposed our brand to millions of people around the world who had not heard about us for one reason or another. And I think, there was a whole new generation that suddenly saw, wait a minute, all the problems I’ve been having in my relationship and my marriage, all the questions I’ve had about monogamy. This might answer a lot of those questions,” he says.

According to Keable, this growth they are witnessing in India might be reflective of a larger churn that is going on socially in India. “I think there are lots of young people in India who have entered into traditional monogamous relationships, who are discovering that the story [they’ve] been told by their parents, their governments and potentially by their religions, doesn’t really hold up as well… I think there is a growing understanding among youths in India that maybe we don’t need a relationship like our parents. Maybe we can look at something that’s a little different,” he says. He points for instance at the changing role of women in societies, whereas more women get financial freedom and agency, they are less willing to compromise and live in unhappy marriages. “And it’s not always a rejection of their partners. And this is one thing I find really interesting,” he goes on. “We had a researcher come to us a few years back to study why do women cheat? Because we have this belief often that it’s emotional, it’s revenge, it’s all these interesting things. And she wanted to validate it. And so she did a survey of a significant portion of our membership and she discovered that 80 percent of the women on Ashley Madison were in fact seeking beneficial, positive sexual relations because they were in sexless marriages. And so, a lot of these women are saying, I love my partner, but he’s unable or unwilling to fulfill my sexual needs. So, I’m going to outsource that so that I can maintain my primary relationship. So, it’s an act of salvation for their marriage because they want to stay with their partner, but they’re not willing to compromise on a healthy, positive sex life.”

There are some interesting ways in which the user base in India differs from the rest of the users on Ashley Madison. Users here for instance tend to be much younger. Globally, the average age of women on the platform tend to range between 38 to 40 years, and between 42 to 44 for men, but in India, Keable says, the average age falls several years younger. This probably has to do with marriages in India taking place much earlier compared to many Western countries. Interestingly, the notion that the platform’s growth in India would be fuelled by its usage in India’s many large metropolitan cities, and that it would have little or no traction in smaller towns and cities which are seen to be more conservative and their attitudes to marriage more rigid are skewered when you actually look where the highest number of sign-ups are coming from in India. In December last year, when Ashley Madison looked at where the highest number of sign-ups were coming from in the country, while they found New Delhi took the top spot, eight out of the remaining top nine emerged to be in distant non-metro cities like Vellore, Coimbatore, Thanjavur, Dindigul, Thoothukudi, Erode, Tirunelveli and Salem (interestingly all from Tamil Nadu). When the platform had compiled a similar summer list a few months prior, it had noticed a similar trend, with the temple town of Kanchipuram taking the top spot.

Ashley Madison isn’t the only extra-marital platform in town. There are others such as Gleeden which have also been reporting a growing user base in India. The rise of these so-called discreet apps comes at a time when there has been a growing disillusionment with traditional dating apps. The culture of endless swiping, superficial interactions and appalling behaviour that these dating apps seem to have ushered in has left many users frustrated. Keable claims that platforms like Ahsley Madison encourage people to be more honest than on traditional dating apps. “When you go to traditional dating apps, if people are looking for a life partner, they present their absolute best self. They may not necessarily lie, but they don’t disclose all their red flags. And then sometimes people are either trying to trick somebody or not telling the truth about their intentions… But on Ashley Madison, people are typically looking for something very specific. You’re looking for something that’s missing in your life or you are looking for a very specific type of relationship. So, people tend to be a little bit more honest and a little bit more direct in their profiles and their communications,” Keable says. Because platforms like Ahsley Madison are a credit-based model and not a subscription-based one, they have also noticed that women are less inundated by the deluge of requests that they often face on traditional dating apps. “You don’t get guys swiping 100 women every Friday night and clogging up their inboxes… Men have to be choosier in terms of which women they attempt to communicate with. And what we find is that it makes for a better connection,” he adds.

The grey area in which adultery operated in India has changed in recent years with the country officially decriminalising it in 2018. But while the laws may have changed and extra-marital affairs might have been around for a long time, this does not mean that adultery isn’t scoffed at. Platforms such as Ashley Madison that are seen as facilitating extra-marital affairs are often charged for attacking the institution of marriage. As it grows in India, where marriages are seen not just a lifelong commitment but one that spans seven lifetimes, won’t it increasingly come under attack? “We don’t attack it [the institution of marriage]. That’s the simple answer,” Keable says. “The reality is, if our business didn’t exist as of right now, not a single one of these affairs would cease to happen. People would find other outlets…. We don’t encourage affairs. We don’t facilitate affairs. What we do is provide a place where people can be more honest, and consenting adults can take their actions to a place where there’s a little bit more discretion.”

Keable offers the example of the company’s survival despite the data breach, and the resulting pressure that came with it, back in 2015 to emphasize his point. “The reason why we’ve survived some of the turmoil that we’ve been through is that we’re offering something that the society wants, the society needs, and there’s a value in it,” he says. “And we are bold enough and brazen enough to offer it in the manner in which we do.”