Business Model of Bumble You Need to Know That Changed the Dating Trend

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In the mid 90’s, Computer and IT industry started emerging exponentially and a lot of entrepreneurs had the intention to introduce one’s life essentials into digital spaces such as Socialising, Working, Education, Meditation and so on. One of these was Dating...and bam, in April 1995, Gary Kremen launched first online dating service “match.com”. After 2 years In 1998, A film released on the same concept i.e. “You’ve got mail”, in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fell in love online, yes 90’s kids are catching on, right? Since then, the concept of finding love online went mainstream.

In the last two decades, numerous online dating services were introduced. But the journey was not easy for most of them. Several Lawsuits, lack of trust, fake accounts, sexism and there were lot of reasons because of which people tended to move away from online dating, especially women. But the woman who changed the dynamics of online dating forever was whitney wolfe. After leaving tinder she joined a russian entrepreneur andrey andreev founder of world known online dating platform badoo and launched bumble in december 2014.

Bumble is a unique dating platform that exclusively gives right to women to make the first move. To avoid spamming, wolfe and team smartly designed the algorithm of this app, after getting the match, men are not allowed to start the conversation and women have just 24 hours to message before the match would be disappear in freemium version. But in case of a homosexual match, both the users can make the first move.

Bumble is strictly a women centric dating platform that empowering women to break the social stigma around dating where man are always expected to start conversation first. It’s not only about starting the conversation first that is women centric but the company itself. 82% of its employees and almost senior management positions held by women. There are three major components of bumble app bumble dating, bumble bff and bumble bizz. We all have knowledge about what these three components cater, i.e. dates, friends and professional network. Now we have to shift the gear to its business model canvas.

Key activities of bumble are app development and platform maintenance along with guaranteed security. Brand reputation and users data are two essential resources to expand its presence across the world. Currently bumble is gaining its users data in three categories vis-a-vis singles looking for love, people looking for friendship and professionals looking for network. The platform building its customer relationship on the basis of location and trust (of women). It offers values by finding meaningful networking that reduces the tendency to swipe just for fun, by providing safe online community and women empowerment. Bumble promoting itself online and in events but the most important ‘word of mouth’ which help them to make valuable connections. User base of bumble shoot up enormously 100 times in six years as 100 milion in 2020 as compared to 1 million in 2015. After couple of years of launch of the app, Okcupid and match.com tried to acquire it and make a deal within $1 billion, but co founder wolfe found it inappropriate and reject the offer. But in 2019, giant investor blackstone acquired the holding company for bumble and badoo for $3 billion.

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