‘The Auntie Network’: yet another route for South Asian Americans to tie the knot

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Radha Patel, founder of The Auntie Network, began connecting prospective couples, years before establishing her online endeavor that operates exclusively in the U.S., and is a personalized match-making ‘family focused’ dating app for South Asian Americans.

In a recent interview on ITV Gold, she said the app allows both parties involved to engage on their own terms, enabling the two actual people to interact with each other, and yet have the proxies like parents, aunties, uncles etc., be involved in the process.

Married herself for 12 years to the man she met at a Matrimonial Convention, Radha Patel began connecting people in 2018, but informally, long before that.

“I’ve been a connector my whole life,” she said. Over time she realized the parents did not have a way to formally be involved in the matchmaking process, especially in the U.S. So she decided to create something designed particularly to help them in he search for a future partner for their children.

She says she took the ‘good parts’ of the existing network of aunties, and put it on an online app. And men are also allowed – uncles, chachas, “We welcome anyone with a vested interest” in the future of relatives.

Keeping in mind that some users may not be tech-savvy, The Auntie Network has kept it a simple process for parents to sign on to the app, and invite their children who then make their own profiles.

“We don’t do any chaperoning,” Patel said adding that as long as a person is of South Asian origin, “we would love to have you.” Age is no bar either, because there is no right or wrong about when one wants to be married, Patel says.

After years of personal research, when she made the decision to launch the app, Patel conducted market research on the issue, and had her husband and children’s full support, when she launched it.