During the first year of the company, the three founders — Kevin Owocki, now 26, Daniel Stev, 29 and Adam Sachs, 28 — hustled to get the word out, hosting parties, blitzing college campuses with flyers and doing a big push on Facebook.
By the end of 2008, Ignighter.com had 50,000 users registered in the United States — a decent number, but not big enough to put on the digital map dating, which is crowded with competitors.
"People just don't get what the site was when we told them about it. They thought it was a site for Orgies, "says Mr. Sachs, who is responsible for business development and media relations for the site.
Then, in April 2009, while the control statistics on visitors to the site, Mr. Stev, who is responsible for marketing, noticed that there was a lot of traffic from Singapore, Malaysia, India and South Korea.
Mr. Sachs recalls: "we don't pay any attention to it at first".We thought, ' that's interesting — now let's plan our next event in New York. " ”
But by June, they couldn't ignore traffic from Asia — and in particular India, who then had more visitors than any other Asian country. Ignighter was earning hundreds of users per day, mainly from New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.
"In January 2010, we made the decision that we are an Indian dating site," Mr. Sachs says. And now, with nearly two million users — and signature more than 7,000 daily — Ignighter is considered the fastest-growing dating site of India.
To put it another way, gets as many users in a week in India as it did in a year in the United States. Next month, Ignighter will open an Office in India and take a dozen local employees. The company has continued to develop its American site, even if it remains online.
As funding heats up for Web start-ups in General, some investors have taken note of Ignighter and its potential in India. This month, the company has closed a $ 3 million round of financing. Forty percent of its investors are based in India, including Rajan Anandan Thursday, Google top executive in India. In the United States, Ignighter is supported by point Judith capital, founder collective and GSA Venture Partners, among others.
"We are here, a few guys Jews sitting in Union Square, and we might accidentally have revolutionized the dating scene in India," Mr. Sachs says of himself and Mr. Stev. They and Mr. Owocki, which is the cost of Web development and programming to Ignighter, have never been in India — although they now plan to make frequent trips there.
Isn't all that unusual for start-ups find that their market is not what they intended, said Sean Marsh, co-founder of point Judith capital in Providence, R.I. and an investor in Ignighter. But not all business owners choose to listen to what the market is telling them, says.
Although an Indian dating site was not their original concept, Ignighter founders decided to move in a crucial moment, he says: "you must be flexible as an entrepreneur and bend the feedback of the market and consumers".
As was the case this happy accident?
Mr. Stev suspects who read the blog service like Mashable and TechCrunch technology in India. From there, has grown in part because the dating in India is still in a somewhat embryonic stage. Happens in big cities like Mumbai and Hyderabad, but in many less cosmopolitan parts of India is still considered taboo for unmarried men and women to be seen in public collection. Many couples, as they have for centuries, through arranged marriages that meet their relatives they orchestrate.
But for some in this generation — those raised on a diet of MTV and social networks — there is a desire to find new dating script, or just to hang out with a group of Coed.
The dynamics of Group makes even come out easier sell to parents who are concerned about the security and accuracy. Here's what led Rohan Bhardwaj, 23, to set up a profile on Ignighter last month. Working in New Delhi to Exclusively In, an online store that sells Indian luxury goods, and, as the majority of his peers, he lives with his parents. Ignighter has heard from her boss in the United States — the CEO of Exclusively., who shares office space with Ignighter in Manhattan — and his cousin in Canada.
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