Match Group Asia CEO Malgosia Green on bringing Hinge to new markets and the promise of AI

 

By Jessica Bursztynsky

Malgosia Green is three months away from uprooting her life in Vancouver and fully immersing herself in Singapore as CEO of Match Group Asia.

 

She was appointed to the newly created role earlier this year by Match chief Bernard Kim in an attempt to deepen its user base and expand in a massive market. She’s overseeing two brands as well as go-to-market strategies for other companies with a total staff of more than 400. Prior to taking over as CEO of Match Group Asia, Green led Plenty of Fish, Match’s seasoned-but-low-key dating app, for nearly five years.

In the past, Match Group’s Europe and Asia divisions were bundled together, with no senior corporate leaders based in Asia itself. “Given the huge potential of the region, and how large it is . . . it made a lot more sense to have someone specifically dedicated to Asia itself, and to be based in the region,” Green tells Fast Company.

A spokesperson declined to share how many users are in the region. A large focus is on increasing the dating giant’s presence in Japan. It’s Match’s second largest market, outside of the U.S., but there’s still an extremely low penetration of dating apps. “How few people are actively dating is surprising,” Green says. “Almost half of singles in Japan want a partner, but do absolutely nothing, so, they do not actively date, let alone online date.”

 

About 50% of women and 70% of men in their 20s in Japan are single, according to 2022 white paper from the Japanese Gender Equality Bureau. One in four singles in their 30s in Japan is unwilling to get married because of concerns including the loss of freedom and a fear of shouldering the housework, the report added.

The company’s most popular app in the country is Pairs, which is a subscription model that draws in what it calls high intent daters who are looking for long-term partners. Tinder, meanwhile, has the same freemium model it does in other markets, where users can join the app for free but pay for specific upgrades.

“There’s a lot of upside there if we can somehow convince even five more percent of the people who are doing nothing or the ones who haven’t tried an online dating product . . . there’s a lot of opportunity there,” Green says.

 

Still, there are difference in the products themselves compared to Western operations. Japan requires age verification for dating apps, so that’s part of user onboarding. The marketing of Tinder is also more conservative than one would see in the U.S., Europe, or India.

The company is also working on bringing Hinge to new markets in Asia, potentially in the coming quarters. It currently operates in India.

Much of Green’s mission is focused on Hyperconnect, the Seoul-based social media and video tech company Match acquired in 2021 for $1.73 billion. Kim has spent much of his tenure focusing on product innovation and rollouts across its portfolio companies, indicating that’s the best way to bring in users and grow revenue.

 

Part of that development will be in artificial intelligence, Green says. She compares the potential impact of AI in dating as transformative as to how the iPhone was to the industry. Match currently uses a range of AI tools, but there’s still so much untapped opportunity. For her part, Green wants to harness Hyperconnect’s abilities to see what can stick.

“A lot of my focus with Hyperconnect is to figure out how do we unleash a lot of that creativity and innovation and that amazing AI team . . . and let them look at quickly ideating, coming up with creative new solutions, bringing them to market, and testing them and seeing which ones take off,” Green says.

 

Fast Company

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