In a time when the search for love is down to split-second impressions of dating profiles, and hot and cold situationships, dates that fall through and ghosting plague a generation – how do you find your person? Maybe your wingperson could help? This is the idea at the core of the ‘pitch a friend’ dating events, quickly gaining popularity in Bengaluru’s dating scene.
The idea is simple: channel the PPT-making skills you acquired at college or work into finding your friend a date, keeping it light and funny. “We call them the ‘pitcher’ and ‘pitch-ee’. The pitcher comes up with presentation or an oral pitch on why they should date their friend,” says Subhay Joshua, the operations manager at Blr Groove Co. He adds with a laugh, “We’ve even had cases with moms coming in and pitching their child like ‘here’s why this guy is husband material’.”
Organisers have been seeing seats quickly fill up, often with people in their early twenties to thirties attending. The appeal, as Parthana Prasad, the owner of Beku cafe, who recently hosted one for the queer community notes, is having a friend there to cut the tension. “It’s an extra nerve-wracking experience to walk into a room full of strangers and feel comfortable enough to let yourself loose and make connections. This makes it all five times easier,” she says, adding, “When a friend who cares for you is talking about you, it adds a playful element – they’re mostly roasting each other more than being very nice.”
This format, popular abroad and viral on Instagram for a while, has been adopted and tweaked by Bengaluru’s organisers to give a bit more room for socialising. As Joshua says, “We start with our own version of icebreakers. When they lose the initial anxiety, people are much more open to asking questions, clarifications during the pitch and even bantering here and there.”
Anurag Pandey, the founder of Third Place, who hosts ‘pitch and pair’ events explains the format they’ve built around the core idea. “We start with a connection hunt, where we help people play a human bingo game. Then, we do the presentation pitches, followed by a single-mingle party where people find out their top three matches based on a questionnaire of values and beliefs they’ve filled out in the beginning,” he says, adding, “The results are based on relationship science but you can still talk to anybody in the room.”
A potential downside, however, is that a lot depends on your friend’s ability to be a convincing and entertaining presenter. “We’ve noticed that pitchers are usually extroverts and pitch-ees, introverts. Women also often put in much more effort into the presentation,” observes Joshua.
Neeriah Samraksha, a cognitive science researcher in her 20s, who spent hours on the PPT that got her friend her current boyfriend, shares that honesty is key to success. “I started off by introducing her, all her little quirks, all the best things about her but then, I talked about red flags too – the best and worst, as someone who has seen her date people. I made a video montage too.” She adds with a laugh, “Keep it whimsical and fun but stay authentic because you don’t want them to return your friend saying, ‘This is not what I was told!’”