Post #11 - Tinder - Dating platform review

App - Tinder.

Location - Silchar, Assam. 
Review duration -  March 2019

Official Facebook page- https://www.facebook.com/TinderInd 

Brief background

• As per the 2011 census, Silchar was the 270th most populous city in the country.
• Tinder is the most commonly used dating app in Silchar.

Brief review

Detailed Review

Note - The tinder account used in this survey was a male account, which means it will not see male accounts with interests only in women.

Total profiles

• Total number of profiles swiped for this survey was 196.

Gender ratio

• 2 : 1, not considering those males who had set their preferred gender setting to only females. Note that this would, of course, take away a large number of males, comprising mostly of straight ones.

Ethnic composition 

• Ratio of Tibetan-Burman people (including Meitei speaking people who are a significant population here) to Indo Aryan people (including Bengalis, the largest linguistic group in the region) was roughly 4 : 5.
• Among females, the ratio of Indo-Aryan group was lowest in the age range of 20-30. Refer to Ethno-linguistic breakdown graph under "Age bracket Ratio" section.
• One white female and male each in 30-40 found.

Body sizes ratio

• Ratio of plus sized to others was roughly 1 : 22 among females and roughly 1 : 64 among males.
• Note - I have categorized only those profiles under plus size which clearly appeared so. In case of doubt, I marked them in other category. Pictures are often not enough to get an idea of body sizes.

Age bracket ratio

• All profiles were below 40 years of age. 
• Ratio of (18 to 30) : 30 plus was roughly .5 : 1. Following are some breakdowns by age bracket ratio - 

Miscellaneous

• One woman in 20 -30 age range category seemed married.
• Guessing from the profiles and going by the known demographics of the city, majority were Hindus. One Muslim woman in 20-30 age group and one Muslim man in the same age bracket were found.
• One an average, each day, 5 to 10 new female profiles appeared. 
• I did not check for the entire available age range in my earlier reviews (last year) of Tinder at Silchar, but while looking for the 20 - 30 age range category, there used to be some days when hardly one new profile would appear. Going by that, the number of new users seemed to be steadily high this year.

Post #5 - Event review - Bacardi NH7 Weekender Music Festival

Event - Bacardi NH7 Weekender Music Festival.

Location - Pune, India. 

Official link - https://www.facebook.com/nh7weekender/
Review period - Dec 2018

Quick review

Brief Background

• NH7 weekender is one of the biggest music festivals of India touring multiple cities and covers diverse genres including rock jazz, reggae to name a few. There is also fair inclusion of electronic music.

• It is a great platform for famous as well as independent and emerging artists from India and around the world.

• Pune is the home city of the event, where it happened for the first time in 2010. Since then it has been to several cities including Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Noida, Kolkata and Shillong.

Attendees stats

• Total attendees - Officials figures for 2018 event are not out yet, as per our observation, an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people were present at the event at a time on the last day of the event.

• Gender ratio - Women : men felt roughly like 1 : 2.5 inside, in the food stalls section. We could not do enough sampling though. While entering the event on the first day, a random counting of the people walking towards the entry gate gave a ratio of 1:3.

• Dressing - While the men are generally dressed well covered, a lot of females come wearing very revealing dresses. It would be difficult to write down a ratio but, at least 10 girls could be seen wearing only lingerie like bras (please let us know in comments if you know what are these called) to cover their tops. Though last year, the ratio of girls wearing tops exposing their midriff was higher, with almost 1 in every 7 girls doing so, this year it came down to almost 1 in every 15 or more. The acceptance of those lingerie like bras seemed to increase this year.

• Age ranges - Majority below 25 years. 18 to 21 seemed to be a significant group.

Other information

• Fun activities - There were stuff like life size fussball booths, where people would position themselves like the human figures on rods in a game of fussball. Also, there was a photo booth which captured photos of people jumping on a trampoline from multiple angles and sent them a compiled version of those. However, in past years, there could be seen one or two people, once in a while holding a "Free Hugs" banner in earlier years, whereas not even a single such boy or girl could be seen this time. There was also a "Camp Tinder" in the 2017 edition, which was absent this year. Although it was not a dating booth, as there was no blind dating sort of thing going on there, the crowd was just hanging out or playing some games or listening to some smaller casual jams by the artists. 

• That year, there was also an "It's a match" phone screen cutout with face cuts wherein two people could put their faces and get a photo.

• Event entry - Regular tickets priced at approx 3500 INR for 3 days, with discounts for those under 21 and for early bird and pre-season sale.

• Event rules - Alcohol is served only to those above 25 years of age. Bands are issued to attendees at the registration counters after verifying their identifications. Sections serving alcohol were gated and bouncers at those gates allowed entry for those with the alcohol bands only. 

• There were designated smoking zones. Checking was done at the entries to prevent those with drugs.

• Food and other stalls - 

• There were two large food courts, with varieties of food from different cuisines, lots of T-shirt stores with nice designs and alcohol being served next in at least two arenas.

Post #2 - Community/Platform review of Floh - A platform for singles

Location - Delhi/Mumbai/Pune/Bengaluru, India
Official link - https://www.floh.in/

Quick details

Brief background

• Floh is a revolutionary platform for singles in India, because it has addressed one very big problem in the dating scenario - the highly skewed effective gender ratio. This is a game changer in the market, simply because the availability of an equal number of females has made the men less desperate in their approaches and this has improved the overall experience for both the genders. Floh is the only platform which guarantees a balanced gender ratio in it's events. 
• The platform is pretty liberal and does not dictate how participants are supposed to take it forward to -

"Floh is much more than just a matrimonial or a dating website – it’s a “Singles Community”. We facilitate conversations between screened members via exciting and fun events and let things take a turn via that."

• Members have to undergo a screening process and membership is paid.
• All members are professionals and come from diverse fields, ranging from the very common, IT professionals to rocket scientists and entrepreneurs into organic farming.
• There is a great variety in their events as well. 
• Undoubtedly, there is, no close competitor of their kind in the market, as of 2018. Another platform, which comes close, and conducts events in Pune as well, is called Footloose No More. 

Gender ratio and other details of participants

• The gender balance is well maintained in their events, as they claim it. No disappointments are expected. Event registrations have a fixed equal number of slots for men and women. Only if someone cancels, their slot remains empty.
• However, do note that there are some events called Floh Pops, which do not guarantee the same. These things are generally mentioned in every event's detail section.
• The guest list, with the profiles of all the attendees, is shared to all other attendees, one day in advance of an event date.
• Talking about a treasure hunt event I had attended, the average age of women, roughly at around 32, was a bit higher than that of the men, which was roughly around 29–30. Talking about the age ranges, there were two ladies aged 36 and one gentleman roughly the same. The youngest, among the ladies was around 28 and among the gentlemen, was around 27. I would have really wanted to see some more women in the 25 to 30 age group. Similarly, more men in the 35+ age group could have probably balanced out the women in the higher age group.
• The gender ratio is maintained by keeping the membership application of additional members on hold, till a balance is reached. As such, the profiles available online, via the app, is also expected to have a healthy gender ratio. Profiles are accessible without actually attending events as well.
• It is expected to be tougher for the men to become a member, because of the higher number of men available in general. One of my dear friends, who got rejected, blames it to his lack of preparation and the noise in the surroundings, when he picked up the automated screening call. Wishing you good luck!

For more reading

• Floh FAQ
• My first experience of attending a Floh event
• For more about the author and the project read - What exactly is The Gender Ratio Project?