Rivet, a community-driven dating network built around human-powered "social matching", has raised $10.5 million (about Rs 100.6 crore) in seed funding from Peak XV Partners, Shine Capital and Blume Ventures. The round was announced on 24 September 2026 alongside the startup's nationwide launch across the United States.
Founded in 2025 by Taru Kapoor and Rajat Sahni, Rivet is betting on people rather than algorithms to fix dating. Kapoor is a former Tinder and Match Group executive who joined Tinder in 2015 to build the business in India, spent eight years with the company, and is credited with helping turn Tinder into a major brand in India; she left in 2023. Sahni previously led CarDekho's used-car business. Former Tinder and OkCupid CEO Elie Seidman is an early investor who advised Kapoor during Rivet's development.
The product works like this: users join as daters, but anyone can also join as a "matcher" — even people who are not dating — to assess potential pairs and recommend introductions they believe could work. Those recommendations feed a Social Matching score; pairs with high scores are introduced, and each person then independently decides whether to connect. The company describes it as a "give-to-get" model: help others find love while receiving recommendations yourself. The app is free on iOS and Android, and Rivet has been testing the model in Charlotte since earlier this year, alongside offline live dating shows where audiences vote on couples' chemistry.
Although the company is headquartered in New York (MeantToBe Inc.), it has an office in Delhi NCR, with its engineering and machine learning teams largely based in India. The fresh capital will go into product development, distribution and expansion across the US. A national survey commissioned by Rivet found that 68% of Gen Z and Millennials would be interested in helping a stranger find a romantic match anonymously — suggesting the community-matchmaking itch is real.
Why it matters for founders
Rivet is a reminder that a strong founder-market story can carry a seed round: Kapoor spent eight years inside the incumbent she is now disrupting, and the round reads as a bet on that pattern recognition. If you're building in a tired category, your unfair advantage is lived experience of the incumbent's blind spots — and a founding team that pairs it with fresh distribution ideas is exactly what lead investors look for at seed.