Find them on 'Bumble'...

Priti Joshi, the Global Director of Strategy of Bumble, is on a mission to make women the leaders in the tech world. Bumble is a social network by women, for everyone.

"Bumble is more than just a dating app where women make the first move. Bumble is a mission-based company that connects you with people you haven't met yet - across business, friendship and dating.

Our workforce is 85 per cent female and we have a woman founder and a woman CEO. Bumble has always been built with women in mind - the concept that women make the first move came from personal experience that our team had online where women can be inundated with aggressive and unwanted messages.

By having a woman initiate contact, the dynamic is flipped, and she is in the driver's seat. Once connected, women have 24 hours to start the conversation, allowing them to move at their own pace," Priti shares.

An NRI, Priti has done her graduation in Business Honors and Finance from University of Texas, Austin and an MBA from the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania.

Last year, she led the strategic launch for Bumble in India and prior to her current role with the Bumble, she spent the better part of a decade working in management consulting at McKinsey & Company where she helped solve strategic marketing and growth challenges for global consumer-focused companies.

Excerpts from an interview:

Tell us about your journey.

I started my role as the Global Director of Strategy at Bumble in April 2018 leading special projects with a strong passion for Bumble's mission.

Today, I lead the strategy and insights team focused on data and insights and growth in existing and new markets. In my job, my goal is to bring science to the art of business strategy and use creative insights from data and market research to ensure sustainable growth for the company.

I've also been focusing heavily on expanding the company's presence internationally.

Tell us about 'Find them on Bumble' initiative.

'Find Them on Bumble Bizz' is a fully integrated, multi-market campaign celebrating 25 remarkable Indian women with inspiring stories of personal and professional success.

This is the second in our #FindThemOnBumble series, following the incredible success of a New York City launch in Fall 2018. The campaign format is localised by market and is expected to be developed for additional markets in the Americas, Europe, and Asia before the end of the year.

The campaign in India features Bumble Global Advisor and investor, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, along with 25 inspiring women from Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.

How does the app benefit women?

As we were doing our strategic research in 2018, we spoke with many early adopters and potential users of Bumble in India.

One of the things we consistently heard was the desire for women to feel secure and comfortable when making connections online.

Therefore, we developed a feature specific to India - for women using Bumble Date, only her first initial will show.

When she is ready to share her full name with connections until then her identity is protected.

In addition to India-specific features to ensure women feel secure and comfortable in making the first move, we have many global features that are live in India.

For example, we make it easy to block and report anyone you don't want to see on the app, and we have photo verification to help ensure that the person you're connecting with is who they say they are.

We launched the Bumble Bizz mode to empower women by encouraging our users to foster the kind of community they report they're missing at work.

We doubled down on this mission earlier this year when we introduced our 'Women in Bizz' feature.

Now, women have the option to focus their professional networking exclusively to other women on Bumble. The idea is to help our community connect, find mentors or mentees, and build support systems outside the office.

How is the response from the women using it?

We are very excited about the initial growth in our market in India. Women in India have made the first move over three million times and are sending 2x as many messages as women in the rest of the world.

In fact, one-third of our users are women - and our female user base in India has grown more than 1.5x faster than males since launch.

Furthermore, since our launch in December 2018, we've seen that 60 per cent of women in India uses two or more modes within Bumble.

This speaks to the power of the social network - and we're excited to continue to support women as they experience each of Bumble's modes.

What are your future projects?

We will be introducing a new product feature globally called 'Private Detector', which takes an unprecedented approach to advance safety in both the digital and real worlds.

The feature will automatically blur lewd images and alert the user that they have been sent something inappropriate.

From there, the user can decide whether to view the image or block the image and if compelled, easily report the image to the moderation team.

We also just launched 'Moves Making Impact', a new product feature where Bumble gives back on behalf of every woman who makes the first move on its app.

This is the first time a global company has given each of its users the power to drive social good fundraising through in-app activity.

Women on Bumble will choose one of three causes – human rights, public policy or economic development – that they want to support through making the first move.

Each cause is associated with a woman leading meaningful change in her community.

Based on the number of first moves made for each cause, Bumble will make a donation to each woman through Vital Voices, a nonprofit that works with women leaders across the world.