Meet the SHEROES - Kalyani Khona

According to United Nations, 80 million people with disability live in India. To cater to their matrimonial needs and widen our audience base, 22 year old Kalyani Khona is working on a matchmaking mobile app called loveability which will connect and match people with disability by focusing on medical condition, information on cure, lifestyle, instruments used and level of independence at home and work. She tells us about the app and her fund raising campaign –

Tell us more about yourself. 

I’m creating a matchmaking app focusing on people with disability and disorders, perhaps internationally the first. Prior to starting Wanted Umbrella; a matchmaking agency focusing on people with disability in 2014, I was working on various projects to explore my calling. I have graduated in finance from H.R College of Commerce & Economics, Mumbai. Currently, I live in New Delhi.

What is Loveability? What initiated the idea of Loveability?

We have 150 members from 20 cities and around 1000 registrations but we have not been able to manage more than 150 personally with our hands-on agency model. Hence, we are working on a matchmaking app called loveability which focuses on people with disability by being accessible to visually impaired individuals and ensure that connection happen on information data like cure, level of independence, medical condition and less on images or pictures. You’ll find more information on the app here.

How do you intend to build the app and what are the challenges that you are facing?

This app is going to be screen reader friendly so that our visually-impaired friends can have equal opportunities to find love. Besides, the app is for everyone and anyone looking for love or life-long partnership. What makes this app different is the filters and decision making based on cure available, medical condition (if any), lifestyle preferences, level of independence at home or work especially for people with disability and much more. Internationally there is no app for 200 million people with disability and that makes loveability the first one perhaps to change the way we perceive love.

More than the operations of the app, our biggest challenge is the social mindset of the. No one deserves to live alone and people with disability also have the right to look for love. Also, while I am trying to create an impact by building something useful, I am also here to create business. I don’t understand why disability is always associated with charity or sympathy. Why don’t we accept that it is a part of life for them, just like wearing optical lenses is for us?

Where do you see this project going in 2 years from now?

With disability and technology being uniform throughout the world, in next two years, we plan to be in four pockets worldwide i.e. India, USA, UK & Egypt with 1 million users through our matchmaking app loveability

A message to all SHEROES out there.

It is important to fall in love with yourself first, everything else can wait.