Dating is the rigid need of almost every unmarried people. Where there are needs, there is a business. Outside China, Tinder is the most used dating app, while in China, Tantan is a well-known online platform for young adults to look for a date, and it's a Tinder-like app.

Match Group, the owner of Tinder and online dating giant, announced its Q1 2019 financial statement with total revenue of $465 million. Meanwhile, Tantan's parent company, Momo Group, a Chinese company focused on stranger social network and online dating, said its net revenue increased to $554.7 million in Q1 2019.

Unlike Match Group, the performance of Momo's online dating business is feeble, since net revenue from live video service reached $400.7 million in Q1, accounting for 72% of total revenue. Besides, Tantan, acquired by Momo in February 2018, is losing money for two consecutive quarters.

Launched in 2011, Momo itself is a location-based hook-up software. In the very beginning, the platform was implicitly promoted with the slogan "Making friends with benefits on Momo." Although it was vulgar enough, it did entice plenty of users in a short time, which laid the foundation for Momo's first position in the online dating market at that time.

Excessive reliance on live-streaming service results in a single revenue model, and the user growth reaches the ceiling. Besides, the proportion of male to female ratio was out of balance, once even reached 9:1, which means a stable dating community cannot be formed. Therefore, Momo Inc. acquired Tantan, a rapidly-growing hook-up app with a male to female ratio of 4:6, for $735 million. Tang Yan, CEO and founder of Momo, said in the earnings conference call that they will always take Tantan as an essential engine to boost the firm's growth in the next few years.

$735 million is big money. No doubt, Momo did benefit from the acquisition, since its competitor was merged into the group, giving the company an absolute dominance in the online dating market and stranger social business.

The stock price once soared to $50 per share, but it's more like a flash in the pan. Later, It has remained between $24-$30 for a long time.

In recent years, the domestic Internet dividend is fading, and multiple companies have gone abroad to seek opportunities and heighten the growth. For instance, Nasdaq-listed YY, the top live-streaming platform in China, acquired Bigo Live, launched social gaming app Hago and video message app IMO and developed the short video platform Like—these are deployments targeting overseas markets—currently, more than 75% of YY combined users are from outside China.

Nowadays, in China, the growth of users is at a standstill; online dating, social network and live-streaming markets are also becoming saturated. Opening overseas markets has become a consensus among Internet companies. As others are obtaining numerous users and taking roots in emerging markets with relatively low cost and technical advantages, Momo is still stuck in the domestic market and sponsor TV shows with a pretty penny, but the results are fruitless.

Tim Connell, a 21-year-old football coach from Australia, told PingWest that he thought Momo is not user-friendly since it's overloaded with features. "Tantan is much better, it is not complicated, more in line with my usage habits, and it is available in English, but Momo does not." said the coach.

Apparently, Tantan is more international. Quartz said Tantan performs quite well in India, according to App Annie, it ranked fifth on the list of dating apps. And statistics show that Indian online dating market is tremendous, as early as 2016, there are more than half of Indians searched for dates through the Internet. Revenue in the Online Dating segment amounts to $62 million in 2019, and it is expected to reach an annual growth rate (CAGR 2019-2023) of 5.7%, resulting in a market volume of US$77m by 2023, meanwhile, user penetration is 2.9% in 2019 and is supposed to hit 3.2% by 2023.

The application was initiated in the South Asian country in June 2018, and it plans to pursue the Indian market aggressively, Rahul Maheshwari, served as Tantan's marketing manager (Asia-Pacific) at that time, said in an interview with The Passage. He also claimed that as long as Tantan keeps the daily DAU growth going up, the firm will provide an open budget for the Indian market.

By advertising on the trendy Chinese app Tik Tok in India, Tantan grabbed a significant number of users and climbed to fifth place in the dating apps rankings.

One years later, in 2019, Rahul Maheshwari was promoted to the head of Tantan India; he confirmed in a recent interview with Economic Times that Tantan has big plans for India with an open budget, and most of the investments would be directed towards growing markets in tier-2 cities.

On the contrary, Tantan's parent company Momo just hold the earnings conference call on May 28. Wang Yu, CEO and founder of Tantan, said it's too early to expand overseas, although they do see a lot of opportunities in overseas markets, especially in Asia.

The employee responsible for the growth of overseas users also told PingWest that their Indian strategy is inconvenient to disclose and keeping a low-profile is the principle of Tantan.

That's not complicated to understand why Tantan founder said on the earnings conference call that it's too early to enter the overseas markets—they actually did an aggressive expansion in India, but do not want to draw attention from the media or capital.

According to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, at present, Tantan is the world's third-largest earner after Tinder and Bumble. However, it still caused a lot of losses to Momo.

Speaking of its parent company, although Momo has been profitable, the price-earnings ratio is not high, and the market is generally not that optimistic about its prospects—It has even been shorted by institutions twice.

Facing the dilemma of a single revenue model, Momo tested a variety of possibilities, such as developing mobile games, encouraging the internal incubation, etc., but it turned out to be not effective.

In opening up overseas markets, the online dating giant has also made a lot of effort. In 2012, an English version of Momo was launched in the US; however, the American users do not pay for it. Later, in 2014, before going public on Nasdaq, a branch office in San Francisco was established by the company. Tang Yan made it clear that he wanted to enter the US market at that time. Soon after, an app called Blupe was launched by the branch and directly targeted Facebook Groups. It was estimated that Momo had spent about $10 million in product promotion, eventually, failed again.

Meantime, domestic fast-rising voice-based social apps are also threatening Momo's position as a leader in the stranger social network field.

Furthermore, Chinese regulators ordered the removal of Tantan from several mobile app stores, as a part of the government's ongoing crackdown on "vulgar" content. The suspension of Tantan leaded Momo's stock to slide sharply.

At present, it seems that the shift to overseas markets can make up for the loss of its suspended business in China. Since Momo descries Tantan as a major boost to the group's future growth, then it has to make hay while the sun shines—which is precisely what they are doing—expanding in India without generating any attention from domestic.

Indian market should have 200 million plus potential users by 2021, according to Tantan. Considering this, it plans to start an office in India in the upcoming months and will hire more talents in India to help the growth.