PRESS RELEASE - Aug 19 - SC Holdings is in active negotiations to increase its shareholding to a controlling stake in Now Dating, a dating app pushing toward integration of AI and voice recognition powered by Alexa, Siri, or Google assist. Now Dating encourages people to move into offline dating as soon as possible.
See full article at Globe Newswire
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MENABYTES - Aug 7 - Match Group has acquired Egyptian online dating startup Harmonica. The financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed yet. Founded in early 2017 by Sameh Saleh, Tamer Saleh, Shaymaa Aly & Aly Khaled, Harmonica is designed to help Muslims find a life partner. Harmonica's small team of 12 full-time employees (including the founders) is joining Match Group and will work on an English app as well. Harmonica currently has an Arabic-only app. Harmonica will remain headquartered in Cairo, with Sameh Saleh continuing as CEO. It will be Match Group's first office in the Middle East.
by Mohammed Salah
See full article at MenaBytes
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MATCH GROUP - Aug 6 - Match Group Q2 total Revenue grew 18% YOY to $498M. Average subscribers increased 18% to 9.1M, up from 7.7M from Q2 2018. Tinder average subscribers were 5.2M in Q2 2019, increasing 503K sequentially and 1.5M YOY. Operating income was $173M, up 15% YOY. Match Group has also invested in and brought on the team behind Harmonica, a dating app based in Egypt. Match Group will further develop this app and invest in product and marketing to expand into Asia and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) that are predominantly Muslim.
See full article at Match Group website
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TECH CRUNCH - Aug 2 - Yoti, the London startup offering a digital identity platform and app that lets users prove who they say they are when accessing services or making age-verified purchases, has raised £8M in additional funding. The startup had raised £65M in total since being founded in 2014. Yoti has formed a variety of partnerships including Heathrow Airport, which is working with Yoti to explore biometric travel for passengers; NCR, which is using Yoti to improve age-verification at self-checkouts; and Yubo, which is deploying Yoti to verify the age of users and to "safeguard" young people online.
by Steve O'Hear
See full article at Tech Crunch
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TECH CRUNCH - July 26 - Muzmatch, a matchmaking app for Muslims, has just raised a $7M Series A. The app has now ~1.5M users, across 210 countries. The funding will help fuel growth in key international markets, is jointly led by US hedge fund Luxor Capital, and Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator - the latter having previously selected Muzmatch for its summer 2017 batch of startups. Last year the team also took in a $1.75M seed. The team has grown from four people seven months ago to 17 now. With the Series A the plan is to further expand headcount to almost 30. Muzmatch was already profitable two years ago.
by Natasha Lomas
See full article at Tech Crunch
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STANDARD.CO.UK - July 25 - Muslim dating app Muzmatch helped 15K couples meet and get married. Muzmatch is often dubbed the Muslim Tinder but the app's founder and CEO, Shahzad Younas, is not so happy with the comparison. "Muslims don't date, we marry," he says. Younas quit his job as an investment banker and spent six months working 18-hour days to create Muzmatch in his bedroom. Six months after launching, the app had produced its first marriage. Today, Muzmatch has 1.5M members. The start-up has achieved profitability thanks to its premium paid-for tier but the next stage is to continue to improve the app and its features, and expand the team and its reach. The start-up has today announced the close of Series A funding round for $7m. Investors included respected Silicon Valley-based accelerator Y Combinator and Luxor Capital.
by Amelia Heathman
See full article at Standard.co.uk
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SYS-CON - July 10 - Perry Street Software, a New York-based gay mobile software developer and the parent company of Scruff, has acquired gay dating app Jack'd. Jack'd will continue to operate as a stand-alone app. Since its launch in 2010, Jack'd has grown to ~5M members worldwide. Perry Street will invest significant resources to upgrade the technology and reliability of the Jack'd app. In the coming months, Jack'd members can expect to see the removal of all programmatic advertising, enhanced controls over privacy and security, and new features such as improved messaging, redesigned Match, richer search, and the ability to include video as part of member private albums or in chat.
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GRITDAILY - June 28 - The SAFE app, calling themselves 'the safe sex app,' just raised $3.5M from investors to partner with HUD and add a feature that will allow users to post their verified STD results. The badge is set to launch of HUD profiles on June 28th, kicking off NYC's Pride weekend. SAFE received funding from Flight Ventures, Harry Schwefel (co-CIO of Point 72), Caivis Investments (led by John Scully, former Apple / Pepsi CEO), Startup Health Ventures, and the Mayo Clinic. HUD is one of the top hook-up sites around the world.
by Yelena Mandenberg
See full article atGrit Daily
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CONTXTO.COM - June 19 - Mi Media Manzana, the Peruvian online dating startup turned the lights off and exited countries where it was operating including Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. After six years of operations, the company will be formally over on June 20. Although Mi Media Manzana was the first Peruvian startup to raise venture capital funds ($2M in four different funding rounds), money still ran out. Liquidity issues, in addition to very low user-retention rates, were the main causes for the demise. "We ran out of cash before reaching our break-even point," said CEO Pedro Neira. In total, Mi Media Manzana managed to acquire 2.5M users during its six years of operation. At one point it was also Latin America's most downloaded Google Play dating app. The startup's main mission was to help singles find a true, meaningful relationship.
by Victor Cortés
See full article at Contxto
Mark Brooks: You can contact the CEO at pedroneiraf@datinglatam.com to discuss buying this company.
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DER BRUTKASTEN - June 6 - The Austrian company Russmedia International acquires the majority stake in Randivonal, a Hungarian online dating site. Founded in 1999, Randivonal is Hungary's leading online dating site today. The company is headquartered in Budapest and employs 25 people.
See full article at Der Brutkasten
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