The recent projection for online dating and matchmaking to reach multi-million dollars by 2029 has been described as a win-win situation for clients and businesses in the sector alike.
This is according to Didi Edet, a matchmaker and an economist.
Speaking about the projection in a recent interview, she explained: “An increase in demand for our services as a whole is a good thing; it will influence lots more startups in the industry and create a competitive environment, which means more innovation, service, improvements and more. It’s a win-win for clients and business owners alike.”
“We have to ensure that we keep the quality of service high and not get carried away by the increase in demand. Having high success rates is very important to us over time. We might increase our staff base to cope with the pressure of the increase in demand, but we will not let the quality of our work drop, especially with certain levels of membership that we handle manually,” she said.
Speaking about the benefits of being both an economist and a matchmaker, Didi Edet explained that both disciplines are related, saying: “I work with statistics. I analyse and interpret data, which is very helpful when it comes to matchmaking.”
She added: “There is an obvious and strong correlation between marriage and economic performance. Marriage is a byproduct of matchmaking, which is why I enjoy researching the economic indicators possibly related to matchmaking, as we have economic indicators like income, children, spending-saving ratio and more that can be affected by the marriage institution.”
As for the challenges faced by professionals in the matchmaking industry, Edet, known online as @matchmakerdidi, offered this insight: “There’s no blueprint or previous marketing strategy for matchmaking in Nigeria, so we had to learn by doing. Therefore, the number one challenge was in marketing, but with the success rates of word of mouth, that area became easier to navigate. Our second major challenge was getting the proper staff and educating the staff on what our mission was. We needed staff that would understand what we wanted to achieve as a platform.”
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