Dating agencies Lunch Actually and Paktor merge
Two of Singapore’s biggest dating agencies, Lunch Actually and Paktor Group, have merged to expand the pool of potential matches for their customers and offer more personalised dating experiences.
The brands under both companies will continue to operate independently after the merger, with the new entity to be called Lunch Actually Paktor Group.
Violet Lim, co-founder and chief executive of Lunch Actually, has been appointed group CEO.
The merger will allow existing clients and users of both companies to benefit from a wider range of dating services and a larger, more diverse pool of potential matches, Ms Lim told The Business Times in an interview on Sept 9.
Founded in 2004, Lunch Actually is an offline matchmaking services agency that connects singles over lunch dates. The company has more than 1.2 million members regionally, with offices in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Established in 2013, Paktor Group has over 20 million users on its Paktor online dating app across Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The group also runs offline dating service agencies GaiGai in Singapore, HeyDouble in Hong Kong, and Paktor Premium in Taiwan.
Lunch Actually and Paktor Group have different client demographics, noted Ms Lim.
The bulk of Lunch Actually’s clients range from their early 30s to late 40s, while Paktor’s offline dating brand GaiGai, for instance, sees mostly clients aged 25 to late 30s.
Paktor Group’s CEO Alex Tam said the merger will bring about more opportunities to cross-match clients and users across Lunch Actually Paktor Group’s different brands, as well as curate more personalised one-on-one leads.
“Let’s say we can’t find a suitable match for a profile on our offline database. Perhaps we can search from our app database and check with some users if they would be keen to explore meeting this profile,” he explained.
He added that both companies can also pool together resources to host combined offline dating events for their customers.
The merger between Lunch Actually and Paktor Group comes amid the declining popularity of online dating apps globally, as younger audiences look for other ways to meet new people.
Shares of Match Group – which owns dating apps Tinder and Hinge – as well as online dating company Bumble have tumbled in recent years. Both companies have lost more than US$40 billion (S$52 billion) in market value since 2021.
According to the 2024 Singles Dating Survey released by Lunch Actually Paktor Group on Sept 9, only half of the 350 respondents – who are aged 18 to 65 and above – were using dating apps.
And among these dating app users, more than a third reported a decline in app usage over the past year.
“The fatigue is really coming from inefficiencies on dating apps,” said Mr Tam. “So what we’re aiming for at Paktor is to help singles find success in (fewer) swipes, or more meaningful swipes.”
Against this backdrop, both Lunch Actually and Paktor Group are hoping to tap on each other’s resources and best practices to improve their services for customers.
Through the cross-sharing of dating insights and preferences accumulated from each brand’s algorithms, the new merged entity will be able to curate more personalised matchmaking experiences for customers, Ms Lim said. This will increase their chances of success in finding a partner.
“With more data, we can better tailor our services and experiences to our clients and ensure better matches for them when it comes to compatibility.”
She also sees an opportunity for Lunch Actually – which has predominantly been an offline service – to adopt some of the Paktor app’s tools, given the latter’s strong digital footprint in the online dating arena.
“Similarly, what Lunch Actually has developed for the offline side of our business can also be brought over to GaiGai. So there’s quite a lot of optimisation in terms of apps or the technology that has already been developed.”
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