Readers whom are familiar with us would know that relationship and dating are topics we covered quite extensively here. Earlier last week, we spoke to the team behind Kehmistry, Malaysia’s first dating mobile app. This week, we spoke to Japan’s mobile app for couples: Pairy.
Pairy is a Japan based social network app for couples. Similar to Between which we recently covered, couples can use Pairy to record their relationship and communicate with their others half. Other than pure chatting, there’s also a sharable album, a calendar as well as a date planner so that couples can plan for their next outing.
Popular features of Pairy
As of September 2013, there were over 130,000 registered users on Pairy. Pairy told Vulcan Post that as compared to where they were back on January 2013, they have grown over six times. While the app is currently not generating any revenue from its users, the company has plans to introduce premium features such as photobooks for couples as well as through advertising.
So what makes Pairy different from other chat apps out there? According to Koichiro Tawa, cofounder of Pairy, the “Pair-Profile” feature is very popular among couples as they use it to know each other better. User can add a “Question-Card” into Pair-Profile, and user and partner write an answer for it.
Another popular feature is its “Date Feature”, where users can search for popular dating spots around and share it with their partners. Other than that, couples can also browse according to the most popular dating spots through an internal Pairy ranking system which ranks dating spots by popularity. Since the feature was launched back in July 2013, there are to date over 150,000 dating spots available for browsing on Pairy.
The trio behind Pairy
With the app currently in the palm of nearly 100,000 couples, the team is focused more than ever to grow the app and extend its reach. Pairy is founded by Toshimasa Takahashi and Koichiro Tawa, whom are respectively the Chief Executive Officer and the Chief Operating Officer. Prior to starting Pairy, both of them have been working for an advertising agency in Japan.
“As smartphone exploded in popularity, many startups launched new app into the market in Japan. From our point of view however, we feel that these apps are too focused on enhancing the lives of individual smartphone users, for example, searching for nearby food through location based services, or even digital wallets. While those are exciting, we are more excited with the fact that noone is focusing on enriching the lives of human to human interaction.” Koichiro-san told Vulcan Post.
The team then set their eyes on the single most important relationship between humans: couples and families. It was natural then for the team to build an app which connects couples with one another.
Both Koichiro-san and Toshimasa-san then convinced CTO Ahmad Shiina to join them on their quest, whom bought into the team’s vision. Ahmad has been working for Japan based DeNA. The trio registered the company TIMERS inc, which is the holding company for Pairy.
Thoughts about competition and a growing segment of a generation who enjoy singlehood
In an interview with Vulcan Post, we also discussed about the competitiveness of the mobile couple app. Naturally, we spoke about Between, its South Korean counterpart which boasts over half a million downloads in Japan. Pairy assured us that they have a better user experience, and claims to have a higher growth than Between.
“What we focused on is creating a better experience for our couples. So far, we have not done any promotions or marketing and publicity, and we are happy to say that our users are pure organic. If you look at the Apple app store ranking for Japan, our ranking is almost the same ranking as Between. However, our growth rate in proportion to the number of users is so much higher than Between’s. Another thing is that we focus on creating beautiful memories including offline experience, not just limited to mobile. Between on the other hand, appears to be a chat and album app for couples.” – Koichiro-san said.
Japan has also been notorious for having a new generation who enjoy singlehood, and a rise of young Japanese who might just stop having sex. Is this a major concern for Pairy, for after all the company is targetting couples and betting on people hooking up and dating?
Apparently, according to Koichiro-san, most Japanese still prefer to get together and get married. The market for online dating services is in fact growing, as more and more Japanese go online to increase their opportunities to meet their other half. As a matter of fact too, 45% of Pairy users stated that they started considering marriage with their other half ever since they started using Pairy.
“We are sure there will be more players in the Online Dating space that will come to the market next year.” – Koichiro-san
The company holds strong to the belief of connecting lives between human beings, and as an extension to connecting couples, TIMERS is working on an app for families, specifically married couples. Pairy told exclusively to Vulcan Post that the brand new app specifically designed for married couples will be launched into the global market in February 2014.
So are you looking forward to the new app? Perhaps Pairy should also create another app for singles too.
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