Juleo aims to disrupt Indian dating market, plans global footprints

With a mission to solve one of the most complex human and consumer internet problems of current times, Varun Sud and Chiranjeev Ghai decided to turn entrepreneurs. They started Juleo in 2023 as a ‘trusted singles exclusive club’ in an attempt to provide a safe, trustworthy, result-oriented dating platform for those seeking serious relationships online.

A year later, the founder-duo believe they have introduced a sturdy alternative to a plethora of dating and matrimony apps in the Indian market, which unfortunately had hitherto grabbed headlines for inefficiency, scams and mental health toll.

Founder and CEO Sud maintains that Juleo is the answer to the cluttered swipe-to-date market. “In all our research with singles across the country, we found that there’s no trusted channel. That’s where we saw an opportunity,” he told Campaign, while talking about the company’s genesis.

Recently, the startup conducted a study with YouGov, a global public opinion company, wherein it surveyed over 1,000 singles from the top eight Indian cities to capture the ongoing trends in Indian matchmaking. The report revealed stunning insights on issues like singles matching with profiles online but not meeting their prospects in person. The issues included concerns around safety and the genuineness of profiles, dating apps fatigue, and the mental health toll experienced while using dating and matrimony apps.

The Delhi-NCR-based startup intends to address exactly these concerns. “We are not a bazaar! We are a club of government-ID-verified members with full focus on meetings. We have designed Juleo for privacy and safety, where women’s profiles are private by default, they choose profiles for meeting while men spend time on those women who are interested to meet, helping both escape endless and aimless swiping,” Sud told Campaign.

Citing it as a global opportunity, Sud also shared that the company is already available in markets outside India, except China, and it intends to grow its international presence when the time is ripe.

“We believe, there is a potential to build a billion-dollar value business just from the Indian market and a multi-billion-dollar business globally because these problems are global. We feel, an Indian company is well-placed to solve it in India first and then do it globally,” Sud informed.

According to him, Juleo’s marketing efforts are largely going to be directed towards digital while acknowledging that word-of-mouth will play a pivotal role in this category. “We have a mix of paid marketing and growth hacks. One of them is a referral program inspired by my learnings at Google Pay, designed to drive growth through word-of-mouth,” he stated.

Just over a month ago, the new kid on the dating block raised $2.5 million in funding from Livspace’s Ramakant Sharma, Cred’s Kunal Shah, Acko’s Ruchi Deepak, and the Groww founders Lalit Keshre and Harsh Jain, among others.

Watch the full video interview where Sud delves into how the company would create an ecosystem for the exclusive online club to flourish and also tap into the hyper-fragmented offline market of matchmakers, which is four to five times bigger than the online matrimony market in India.