Dating App: China videogame developer buys US gay app Grindr

China – Grindr, the dating and hookup app for gay and bisexual men, has just received millions of dollars in investment from a Chinese technology firm.

The company, Beijing Kunlun Tech, which is run by billionaire Zhou Yahui, paid $93 million (£64 million) for a 60 per cent controlling stake in the company – a significant sum for what is Grindr’s first outside investment.

Grindr launched in 2009 in Los Angeles and has rapidly grown in popularity with two million visitors per day and is available in 196 countries. China, however, is not one of them but does pose a lip-smacking untapped resource for huge growth should the app be introduced to the Chinese market.

Beijing Kunlun Tech’s owner, Zhou Yahui, is a relatively unknown name in the tech scene but has made a $2.8bn fortune through free-to-play online videogames and an extremely successful IPO on Shenzhen’s ChiNext stock exchange.

As the FT reports, Kunlun is looking to expand its portfolio by moving away from gaming and following the likes of Baidu and Alibaba by investing in growing US start-ups.

“We built our name in gaming, so we are constantly seeking a popular international platform that will draw gaming traffic, and where we can advertise ourselves and increase our presence overseas. Grindr was a perfect match,” Kunlun said. “It’s not so much that it’s a gay platform as that we see its huge potential to grow and be profitable.”

Although it could offer plenty of potential Kunlun, has not explicitly said it has plans to launch Grindr in China but if it did, it would face competition from Blued – a gay dating app created by an ex-policeman that sees three million daily users and is often described as the Grindr of China.

Grindr founder Joel Simkhai expressed his delight at the deal in a blog post where he wrote “a huge vote of confidence in our vision to connect gay men to even more of the world around them”.

Agencies/Canadajournal