INK Fellow and founder of the unique matchmaking app ‘Inclov’, Kalyani Khona has her work cut out for her, helping people with disabilities find love! Read on to find out more about her work and the various curated experiences Inclov creates.
Q. As one of our Fellows, you’ve been a speaker at INK2016. What was the highlight of the conference for you?
Meeting the other Fellows! When you are set on a different journey, it tends to get lonely. I think the INK conference helped me find my tribe. I re-connect and try to meet them during my travels.
Q. Did you meet anyone during these conferences that lead to an interesting future collaboration or idea?
Sarvesh Shashi ( Zorba, 2016 INK Fellow) and I have collaborated and held India’s first sports meetup for people with disabilities in Chennai last month. This was our second time together and his support has been brilliant in helping us reach out to people based in Chennai. Beyond that, I’ve found a true friend in Anshul Tewari (Youth Ki Awaaz, 2016 INK Fellow) and we are constantly there for each other with regards to all the latest developments in our startups.
Apart from this, I’ve connected personally with few INK attendees and they are now investors in my company Inclov.
Q. Tell us a little bit about your brainchild Inclov. What has been happening with Inclov in the past one year since your INK talk? Any exciting updates?
Inclov is the world’s first matchmaking mobile app that focuses on finding a life partner for people with disabilities and with health disorders. The online solution is complemented with an offline platform, which we call Social Spaces. Social Spaces brings people with or without disability together to meet in person. These meetups are organised at curated inclusive locations across India.
Before the inception of Inclov, people with disabilities painfully endured the incompetence of existing matrimonial portals and dating apps. After learning about this, the founders started a matchmaking offline boutique agency. Due to the great success of the agency, the next problem to solve was that of scale. This led to the creation of the mobile application. This solution has given more control and power to the users.
About Inclov
Crowd-funded in 2015 by 130 global backers, Inclov has 2000 monthly active users and 4000+ matches across 300 cities in India. The tech platform matches users on the basis of preferences like age, location, level of independence, cure, instruments and aid use, level of mobility and percentage of disability. There is a strict 24-hour review process whenever a new user signs up. This ensure that our users see high quality profiles, hence making the quality of matches better and conversion to prospective alliances faster. Our app is fully accessible to everyone including people with visual impairment, retina disorder, colour blindness etc. You no longer have to depend on your friends or family to assist you in the process of matchmaking.
Our recent updates include,
INCLOV SELECT:
We’ve recently launched (June’17) Inclov Select which is an unique matchmaking service through which our dedicated matchmakers and relationship experts will provide their expertise and counseling in assisting our users find better matches and eventually in finding the perfect life partner of your choice. Two of our premium members are already engaged and set to tie the knot in December. This is one month into signing up for our service.
iOS APP:
We are launching iOS mobile app on 15th September, 2017. It’s time to meet the other half!
SOCIAL SPACES:
We held India’s first nightlife meetup for people with disabilities in Kitty Su, The Lalit Delhi. You have to see this video to witness some magic –
Q. How was the response been for the Inclov Social Spaces? What are your future plans?
The response has been extremely positive with each meetup going house full. We’ve recently onboarded new partners and we look forward to integrating the offline aspect of our meetup platform with the mobile apps – android and iOS very soon. Future plans consist of making Social Spaces monthly subscriptions. For e.g. you will soon see 10 Social Spaces in Delhi already lined up (in a year) and you could subscribe to them as a package together so you could plan your social calendar well in advance. Apart from that, we also plan to venture new cities as you see in the line-up already
Q. Right now, what is the thing closest to your heart that you would speak about on stage?
We’ve built these holistic experiences from yoga sessions, sports to nightlife parties for a community that was extremely under-served when we pointed the problem/issues. There were social inhibitions related to them dating or finding love. Today, Inclov is proud to be one of the largest communities of people with disabilities and health disorders across India sharing their journeys from dating to matrimony with their peers and I would love to continue sharing our journey on stage.
Featured photo from Mar 3rd, 2017 issue of Femina. Read the piece here.
