New Delhi: While India reels under the second wave of the pandemic, Indians are increasingly turning to online dating, and a new survey states that 64.9 per cent of its total respondents enjoy it.
The survey by Seeking.com, a sugar dating website, sought to understand dating preferences among Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1994) and the questions spanned various topics, including intimacy, first dates, marriage and children.
Of the 4,012 respondents surveyed, 59 per cent were Gen X men and 41 per cent were millennial women living in the US, the UK, Australia, India, Brazil and Mexico.
From India, 692 people were part of the survey, of which 57 per cent were men and 43 per cent were women.
According to the survey, 75 per cent (519 people) Indians said they would marry someone they met on dating apps while 74 per cent of the respondents said that the man should pay for the date.
Furthermore, 450 people of the total respondents said that they enjoyed online dating for three primary reasons — it was an opportunity to meet people they never would in their day to day life, it was the easiest and best way to meet and people knew what they were looking for.
“Face to face meetings are now translated into virtual dates and there’s been a dramatic increase in terms of messages exchanged and traffic spikes on the site worldwide since the pandemic hit,” said Brandon Wade, CEO and founder of Seeking.com, in a statement.
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Sugar dating in India
According to representatives from Seeking.com, the sugar dating website has seen a 35 per cent increase in users from India during the pandemic.
Sugar dating refers to an arrangement where a person receives gifts, money or other financial benefits in exchange for a relationship. The giver of the above mentioned benefits is called a sugar daddy or sugar mommy, while the recipient is a sugar baby.
At present, there are about 8 lakh users of the website in India, and 4,82,734 are sugar daddies while 3,41,857 are sugar babies. In September 2020, the sugar dating app noted that there had been a “noticeable swell” in Indian health workers joining the app.
The platform was launched by Brandon Wade in 2006 and the India operations of the website and app are run out of Malaysia. The platform has over 10 million users worldwide and is functioning in 139 countries.
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