BENGALURU: Should adultery be tried as an offence, or should the state and its courts stay out of it? A petition submitted to the Supreme Court has started a debate around this. Meanwhile, an app that provides a platform for ‘extramarital dating’ is doing very well for itself in India. It has 2.7 lakh users in India and 45,000 of them are from Bengaluru. In Mumbai, the app has 85,000 users and, in Delhi, 80,000.
The age group most active on the platform are between 34 and 49 years, and many are professionals such as lawyers, doctors and senior executives. The services are offered free for women, but men have to buy ‘packs of credits’ that are priced between `700 and `5,000. No user is locked into a subscription.
Gleeden was launched officially in India in August 2017 but Indians were using its services way before that — they had logged on it to its globally available website platform. It was launched in India because “there was a real potential for the brand”, says Solene Paillet, Head of Communication Management of Gleeden. “Before the official launch... we had a lot of subscriptions of Indian users, without doing any communication in the country,” she says, despite “India being a country with cultural boundations, traditional restrictions and no-parental acceptance.”
But, is the app promoting adultery when it is considered a criminal offence under Section 497 of IPC? Solene replies that they are not promoting adultery. “It’s only a service that allows married people (or in a couple) to connect and interact on a secure platform,” she says, adding, “with a moderation and customer service 24/7”. Gleeden, she says, is for people who have “lost their paradise and are ready to explore outside their unhappy marriage.”
Bengaluru is one of the cities that has readily accepted the idea of this app. “Our Indian users mostly come from big cities. The three cities that were most responsive to our concept are Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru. Most of the members have a privileged professional background. A lot of them are senior executives, doctors, lawyers or bankers,” says Solene.
The dating service is particular about “anonymity and confidentiality”. Therefore, they don’t keep information on members. Members could reveal his/ her identity in bits over time to another member, through features like the one that helps you protect access to your photo.
There was the Ashley Madison scare in 2015, when a group of hackers copied details of its users from the extra-marital dating app’s database and made it public. Gleeden’s members’ personal data cannot be viewed from the outside, says Solene.
There are challenges. Women users are not as active as men, though the app’s spokesperson says that they are seeing more and more Indian women subscribing to its services every day.