BUSINESS INSIDER – Jan 14 – Dating app Muzmatch claims ~1M users. Founded by an ex-Morgan Stanley banker, the app caters to Muslims who are looking to find a partner to marry. Muzmatch is mostly popular in Britain, the US and Canada. Shahzad Younas left his job as banker in June 2014 to learn how to build apps after he had the idea for the company. In April 2015, initially using almost $200K of his own savings, he launched the first version of the app from home, and grew it to 50K users around the world in less than a year. He met iOS engineer Ryan Brodie in April 2016. The pair revamped and relaunched the company in August 2016. In summer 2017, the duo raised ~$2M in seed investment. By halfway through 2018, they had 500K registered users. Muzmatch claims to be the only one in the world with a chaperon feature, which allows a friend or relative to be present in a chat. "There's an Islamic principle where when a guy and a girl are getting to know each other there should be a third party present," Younas says. "For some users it's important – if it didn't have that feature, they wouldn't use it." In October 2018, it launched ads on the London Underground with catchy phrases such as "Halal, is it me you're looking for?" It launched a second campaign in January with similarly tongue-in-cheek taglines.
by Alison Millington
See full article at Business Insider
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