IMPACT 0494: DIGITAL DATING REIMAGINED

Youth Action Challenge (YAC) is a platform for youth to provide solutions that tackle the issues we are concerned about. Since October 2021, over 80 teams and more than 310 youths have undertaken the YAC Season 3 journey.

Anshiqa Agrawal, 21, is an undergraduate student at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. She’s currently majoring in Computer Engineering with a minor in Design, Technology and Society. To her, technology opens up wider avenues for us to create innovative solutions that add value to the lives of people within the community.

Today she shares more about her project Lync that she worked on during the YAC!

In the YAC project, I co-founded the start-up, Lync, which aims to improve the digital dating scene in Singapore by focusing on genuine connections and mental wellness. As such, my role was geared towards improving our solution to better cater to our users and bring a competitive edge within the dating app market.

I was motivated to join YAC because I was inspired by how communities in Singapore are taking the initiative to support young minds and young ideas. I felt confident that this would be a good step in the path to widening the reach of our app and also gaining new knowledge to make it more effective as a solution.

The YAC experience was wonderful! I gained a lot of knowledge and skills to apply not just for this start-up, but also as a skill set for the future in terms of a growth-geared thinking. The mentoring sessions were just as useful and insightful, especially in clarifying questions specific to the progress of our idea.

Some challenges were tackling issues and details that I had previously never thought about. These were revealed to us through the weekly content sessions, and working on these new aspects were insightful, though difficult to grasp initially.

For Singapore’s community where many young and middle-aged singles are becoming more and more involved in social media, our connections are sometimes limited by the superficial judgements that we may subconsciously make. Hence, we hope to create a platform that encourages deeper connections, based on emotional and intellectual interactions for more successful relationships.

My key takeaway was learning how to understand the user better in order to design a platform that best caters to their pain points. I also learnt how to conduct a thorough financial P&L statement and how to build a better, more engaging pitch.