Dating: Eskimi is Out to Give Love a Location

The location based dating feature by Gecko will enable location to be added in a text based format in user profile search, chat, emails and later on in location based advertising.

“It will help users look for their friends and easily connect with new friends around them. It will also allow expanding the opportunities to advertisers with location based ads.” Vytas Paukstys, CEO at Eskimi described to HumanIPO. “We have mobile ads and virtual goods which are Eskimi coins that users pay for through mobile micro payments.”

Coming from Lithuania, the 3 year old start-up has managed to penetrate and set ground in Africa’s largest markets- Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

With over 10 million users in Africa alone, location based dating in addition to an SMS flirting service will bring a whole new dimension to dating. And, there lies no doubt that online dating applications can create solid connections.

On average, users are spending 50 minutes per day in Africa and around 90 minutes in Latin Americas on the mobile flirting service. Vytas says “people exchange messages with the people of different gender, they chat, send messages, user a special flirting service which is basically a picture messaging or emoticon messaging.”

What they are doing best is to focus on less developed markets where mobile is the primary internet device. Nigeria is by far the fastest growing market in Africa. There are over 2.4 million Nigerians registered, 10, 000 new users coming in every day and an average of 130, 000 users accessing the site every day.

In addition, more than 300, 000 users are registered in Ghana and Kenya. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Namibia in turn record 200, 000 plus users each.

But, Eskimi’s focus lies largely in West Africa. “ Nigeria and Ghana are our biggest markets which is due to our focused efforts in the region.” Vyatas told HumanIPO. He is currently on a visit to Nigeria where he plans to market the Eskimi API.

In Africa 2go, Mxit and Motribe are some of the other most used mobile networks due to the location-based chat rooms.

At best, this is just a minor introduction of a feature that has been in the market for a years now. In the international market Yelp Mobile, Neer, Loopt and foursquare as a result of their location based services are some of the most popular mobile applications.