Priyanka Chopra has recently announced her collaboration as an investor and advisor with Bumble. Bumble, is a women-first social networking app, which will be launched in India later this year.
“She’s a partner, and she’s going to help us empower not only the women of India—she will be a global force,” Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday. “Women globally want to be empowered. They need to feel safe, and they need to connect.”
The Challenges
Dating and social networking sites are surely a hard sell for women in India. First and foremost, culturally women in India are not very receptive to such ideas and the second; their safety is always a challenge. For example, if we look at Tinder, men simply outnumber women and those women who use such apps are looked down upon anyway.
“Social networks at large have not won the hearts of Indian women because they don’t feel safe,” she said.
Women Safety
But Priyanka’s whole idea is to make women feel safe while using the app and thus safety features would be added to the app in order to make women feel comfortable. One of such features is to allow women to use only initials and not disclose their full names.
“We have been building this brand women-first, empowering accountability and kindness and connections for four years now. We were preaching a lot of the narrative that so many people are now trying to understand how to work into their business post-#MeToo.”
This marks Priyanka’s second investment in the technological segment, first being in a coding school. Bumble launched, Bumble Bizz in competition to LinkedIn and that is where their journey into India started. Priyanka and Bumble started discussions last year and over the 9 months have worked towards developing the strategy and marketing for the same.
