A 22-year-old girl created world's first matchmaking app for differently-abled people

Kalyani Khona was just 21 when she came up with the idea of setting up a conventional matchmaking agency for differently abled people.

She thought of making an app that will help differently people with disabilities find their perfect life partners. Kalyani who had immense interest in connecting with and meeting new people, dropped her initial plan of launching a regular matchmaking agency due to infrastructure issues.

Instead, she thought of making an app which would be easily accessible to the differently-abled for connecting with each other.

According to a UN report about 80 million with disabilities live in India and out of these only five percent get married. This shocking stats hit Kalyani and she came up with the idea of launching an international mobile app that will reach out to over 200 million people with disabilities.

“There are many initiatives working towards education, employment, mobility, etc., for differently-abled people, but I realized there is not enough importance given to finding right partners for people with disabilities. This is when I launched a matchmaking agency called Wanted Umbrella, which aims to provide a safe and innovative platform to every member joining us through curated events and group dinner meetings so that they can connect with like-minded people for the purpose of matrimony or otherwise,” says Kalyani.

After a year of its inception, Wanted Umbrella is all set to launch this unique mobile app that will enable people with disabilities to meet other like-minded people and find their someone special through the app.

The app is also easily accessible to people with visual impairment. This takes place through ‘screen readers’, a software program that allows blind or visually impaired users to read text displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer or Braille display.

“It is not a charity. If I treat it (Lovability app) like one, I won’t be able to take it across the world and it will get restricted to a few NGOs or people. I want people to know that this is very much a commercial app, just like any other for-profit model,” says Kalyani.