South Asian and Single?

From fewer than 20 to thousands, this photo captures the humble beginning of Serious Pyaar’s journey in 2023.

Harvard startup ‘Serious Pyaar’ is here to change the dating game!

Dating in today’s tech-enabled, globalized world is complex, to say the least - from crafting online profiles, to planning and replanning dates, to searching for authentic connection. For Abinaya Rajesh (MBA ’25), a South Asian expat navigating the Western dating scene, it came with an added challenge to overcome: cultural tension. She found herself straddling two worlds, one rooted in traditional expectations like shared language and family values; the other shaped by modern ideals of chemistry and compatibility. This friction was frustrating, but ultimately formative, sparking the idea for Serious Pyaar. A new kind of dating platform, Serious Pyaar is inspired by Rajesh’s journey to find a meaningful relationship in a world that rarely acknowledges both sides of her identity. Now, users can answer thoughtful prompts, prioritize values and lifestyle preferences, and receive matches that are contextually aligned – not just demographically filtered.

The journey began during Rajesh’s first year at Harvard Business School, where she used the campus as a testing ground for her earliest hypotheses. Through user interviews, minimum viable product (MVP) tests, and constant iteration, she identified a recurring theme: a growing number of South Asian professionals in the U.S. felt underserved by both mainstream dating apps and traditional arranged marriage setups.

Rajesh and her newborn celebrate Harvard graduation.

Remarkably, even before launching a public app, she helped bring together six couples who are now married, with more weddings on the calendar this year. These matches span time zones and national borders, clear proof that Serious Pyaar is meeting a widespread and underserved need. Today, Serious Pyaar boasts thousands of users actively engaging with its beta platform. 

Rajesh stands out as a rare blend of technical depth and entrepreneurial vision. As one of only 30 students admitted annually to Harvard’s MS/MBA dual-degree program, she has consistently demonstrated academic excellence and interdisciplinary leadership. With a foundation in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and experience working on large-scale recommendation systems at Google Search, she brings analytical rigor and product intuition to everything she builds. That technical expertise, combined with her lived experience, fuels her mission to create thoughtful, scalable solutions for the modern relationship landscape. As an expert in recommendation systems, Rajesh is uniquely equipped to tackle the nuanced challenge of matchmaking. Serious Pyaar, then, is not just a personal passion, but a perfect professional fit. 

Rajesh received General Catalyst’s Venture Fellowship for her startup and also secured non-dilutive grants from the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship (where she was a summer fellow) and the Innovation Labs at Harvard. Rajesh said: “I created Serious Pyaar because I couldn’t find anything that actually spoke to what I was looking for. I wanted to build something that respects cultural nuance while empowering people to find a match on their own terms.”

As Serious Pyaar prepares to move beyond beta, Rajesh is focused on expanding into new cities and launching community-led events that bring people together offline. Rajesh is the ideal fit for this venture and under her leadership, Serious Pyaar is primed to create millions of perfect matches in the years to come.

Tim Ford (MBA ’25) is originally from New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in Commerce and Spanish, and completed an M.Phil. in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. Prior to the HBS MBA, Tim worked in growth equity at TPG in San Francisco.