Tinder is Rolling Out Festival Mode to India

Music festivals. They’re the places where you go to avoid showering, listen to tunes, and yes, maybe find love. Tinder, one of the world’s most popular dating apps, has long facilitated the latter with a feature called “Festival Mode.” And now it’s introducing it to a wider audience, with a rollout underway in India.

With Festival Mode, users can add a badge to their profile saying they’ll be attending a specific event, allowing them to match with other festival-goers before they arrive. This allows them to organize meet-ups before they descend upon the mud-drenched madness of a festival ground, where cellular reception and power is a scarce luxury.

Festival Mode launched in India last week, starting with the Bacardi NH7 Weekender in Pune. Tinder previously debuted earlier this year at an array of UK and US festivals, including Bonnaroo and British Summer Time.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s worth noting that Festival Mode works much like Spring Break Mode, which Tinder launched in February. Ultimately, this tool serves to capture and retain a younger demographic who are increasingly spoiled for choice, thanks to the emergence of apps like Coffee Meet Bagel and Bumble.

Furthermore, Festival Mode exists to facilitate behavior that’s already taking place, according to Tinder’s own data. During Bonnaroo 2018, user activity increased by up to 300 times. That spike happened organically, without any coaxing from Tinder itself.

And ultimately, this move is another reminder of the importance of the Indian market to Tinder, which is the company’s most valuable within Asia. Since launching in the country in 2016, the popular dating app has grown at a frenetic pace, recording 7.6 million daily swipes on average across the whole of 2018.

India is also a hugely lucrative market for Tinder, with the app ranked as the second most popular by revenue during Q1 2018, according to App Annie.

With both the Indian events and online dating markets growing, partially thanks to the emergence of a more liberal middle class demographic, it makes sense that Tinder would bring Festival Mode to India.