About us

Rangmel is a dating app for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and questioning adults in India.

Why we built it

India decriminalised consensual same-sex relations in 2018 and recognised transgender people as a third gender in 2014. Neither judgment changed a landlord's mind, a family WhatsApp group, or an HR form with two boxes on it. Most dating apps here are built on the assumption that a profile is something you want the world to see. For a lot of people in this country, it is the opposite: the app has to work while being something you would not want your cousin to scroll past.

So the product decisions went the other way round from usual. Privacy is free and set before your profile ever goes live. Identity is a spectrum with a text box at the end of it, not two radio buttons. And nobody can message you unless you said yes first.

How it works

• You say who you are — gender, pronouns, orientation — and who you want to meet.
• You appear only in the decks of people who are looking for you, and only they appear in yours. The filter runs both ways.
• When two people both swipe right, a conversation opens. That is the only way one opens.
• You decide who can see your face: everyone, only your matches, or one person at a time.
• Every screen has an Exit button, and there is an optional PIN in front of the app, because for a lot of our members the risk is not online.

What we will not do

• We will not sell your identity to advertisers. Your gender, orientation and date of birth are never sent to an ad network, hashed or otherwise.
• We will not charge. There is no paid tier at all, and that includes the features other apps reliably sell — who liked you, filters, incognito, read receipts. A daily allowance of points caps how much any one account can consume; it is not a sales funnel, and running out never produces a payment screen.
• We will not require an ID document. Verification is optional. Demanding government ID from queer and trans people in order to date is its own kind of risk.
• We will not put member photographs on the public web. Our own front page carries no faces, and no profile is indexable unless its owner deliberately turned that on.

How the business works

Right now, it does not. There is no revenue: no memberships, no ads, no data sales, no commission on anything that happens between two people. We would rather say that plainly than invent a business model in a policy page.

If that has to change, the commitments above are the constraints it will have to change within: matching and messaging stay free, identity data never goes to an advertising network, and anything free today does not become paid.

Safety and moderation

Reports go to a person, not a script. Blocking is instant and permanent. Outing another member ends an account on the first occurrence. The Community Guidelines set out the rest, and the Safety Guide covers risks that are specific to dating while queer in India, including blackmail patterns and where to get help.

Who we are

Company details are published on the Contact page.

Questions, press or partnership: contact us.