Dating isn’t usually easy, and online dating is even harder. It doesn’t feel safe, you feel like you’re always taking a risk or you’re approaching disappointment. But with the novel coronavirus pandemic, digital dating is only becoming more relevant. That’s why, on this Valentine’s day, we’ve decided to do a round-up of the top dating apps you can use in Egypt. We’re not saying you won’t have bad experiences on these apps, that can’t be guaranteed. But they’re relatively the best. We’ll also give you the highlights and milestones that the startups behind those apps went through so far.
Hawaya (Formerly Harmonica): Born Out of Egypt, Built for Muslims
Hawaya’s tagline is “Meet Your Life Partner”. So, if you’re not looking for your life partner, perhaps you should steer away. They launched under their former name, Harmonica, and the Flat6Labs alumnus is designed with Muslims in mind.
In August of 2019, the dating giants at Match Group acquired them. On it, women have the ability to make their photos blurry and even add a guardian.
In the onset of corona times in Egypt (which was also around its onset around the world), Hawaya saw a surge in the number of users and their activity on the app.
Bumble: Women Make the First Move, and It’s Not Just Dating
In this app, women make the first move. Their mantra is “women empowerment”. It also allows its users to connect with potential friends (or BFFs, as the startup likes to call them) and do business networking. We’ve interviewed people before who landed jobs on Tinder in Egypt, so, smart move Bumble.
Bumble raised an astonishing $2.15 billion on February 10 during an IPO (Initial Public Offering) when its stock opened at $76 per share, even though its initial IPO was at a price of $43 per share. In the first nine months of 2020 alone, they reported $417 million in revenue!
Unfortunately, Bumble is available in Egypt for iOS users only. If you’re team Android, you can’t download it easily, but there’s probably a work-around you could figure out.
Tinder: Well, It’s Almost a Bit of Everything
Tinder, like Hawaya, is also part of the Match Group. The group acquired the 9-year-old app back in 2017 after it had grown impressively in no time. It became famous in Egypt for its use in getting casual relationships, but people do use it for meaningful and potentially long-term ones as well. It would be safe to assume that Tinder’s viral success in Egypt led the movement to normalize dating apps in the country. It’s also known as one of the first apps that gamified dating.
Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hawaya, tried to buy Bumble as well back in 2017 at $450 million, but the deal didn’t get anywhere. The group, as of the date of publishing this article has a $45 billion market capitalization and is dominating the global online dating market.
