Schmooze, a Bengaluru-based Gen Z-focused dating platform, has launched “Riya,” an AI-powered voice matchmaker designed to reduce reliance on swiping by using conversational voice AI to recommend partners. The move arrives as India’s dating apps market is projected to reach $1.42 billion by 2030, up from $788 million in 2024, with Gen Z users driving growth. Schmooze’s approach uses voice-led conversations to capture compatibility signals beyond photos and short bios, while the company reports early engagement and retention results from a phased rollout.
How Schmooze built Riya: a voice-based alternative to swiping
According to Inc42 Media, Schmooze launched Riya to engage users in natural, voice-led conversations. The assistant asks casual questions and moves into deeper areas like values, lifestyle, and relationship goals. After these interactions, it suggests matches tailored to the user’s preferences.
Schmooze built its own voice AI stack and an underlying large language model (LLM) that has been fine-tuned on dating-specific data. The company states this approach is intended to reduce costs while maintaining greater control over user privacy. The design shifts from manual filtering and surface-level discovery to an interactive method that captures more nuanced signals through conversation.
Schmooze’s broader dating platform uses a meme-led matching format, where users swipe on memes, not photos, to gauge humor and personality. Riya is positioned as an extension of this personality-first approach, shifting from meme swipes to voice interaction for partner recommendations.
Early user engagement and retention metrics
Schmooze reports a user base of 5 million users and 3.5 billion+ meme swipes. For Riya specifically, the company claims over 300,000 users have interacted with the feature as part of a phased rollout.
Regarding retention, cofounder Vidya Madhavan stated: “We are also seeing that retention among users of the personal matchmaker is now 2X higher.” The company also reports that some users spent 40–50 minutes interacting with Riya, including seeking advice on date ideas. These longer sessions suggest the product sustains multi-turn interactions, an area where voice AI and LLM behavior can influence user experience.
From structured preferences to conversational discovery
Riya builds on an earlier feature called “People Finder,” in which users entered specific partner preferences. Madhavan described how users typed requirements such as “extrovert who works in tech and likes to cook” or “6 ft, chiselled jaw, Malayali, prefers to laze in their free time.”
The insight was that while some users welcome random matches, others have sharply defined expectations that existing apps struggle to capture. Riya addresses this by using voice conversations to capture nuanced preferences such as humour style, communication patterns, and family orientation.
This represents a shift in how preference data is collected. The “People Finder” model relied on structured, user-entered constraints, while Riya’s approach uses conversational extraction of those constraints. The LLM is trained on dating-specific data and engages users in one-on-one voice interactions before suggesting matches.
Competitive landscape and market context
Schmooze operates in a competitive market dominated by global dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. Competition remains intense, with players experimenting with differentiated formats including compatibility quizzes, human-assisted matchmaking, and swipe-and-bio models.
Schmooze’s differentiation centers on conversational voice AI combined with a meme-first matching layer. The company claims a gender ratio of 3:1 (male-to-female), which it describes as more balanced than many mainstream platforms. The article does not provide comparative data for those platforms.
The launch reflects broader industry response to user fatigue from repetitive swiping. If Schmooze’s reported retention gains and session lengths reflect actual user behavior, this could suggest that conversational interfaces may serve as a practical alternative for preference discovery. However, whether conversational matchmaking can deliver deeper compatibility at scale remains to be seen as more users access Riya beyond the phased rollout.
The projected market growth to $1.42 billion by 2030 means that shifts in how matching works could influence product design across the dating app category. Schmooze’s approach represents a specific technology bet: pairing a custom voice AI stack with a dating-tuned LLM to translate conversation into recommendations, while using proprietary infrastructure to manage cost and privacy control.
Source: Inc42 Media