Sometimes, it can be difficult for an entrepreneur to pinpoint a precise moment of inspiration that led her to create a product, develop an idea, or explore a new approach to the market. Other times, the source of her motivation boils down to a single motivating event, a moment of clarity well-defined in her mind.
Tickle.life CEO Shakun Sethi’s impetus to launch the community-based discovery platform for sex and sexuality falls into the latter category, stemming from a fateful trip to an adult shop – and, more to the point, the feeling of unease and uncertainty which washed over her as she browsed the shop’s wares.
“My visit to the first sex toy shop and the insecurity that came with what or how to use them was the initiation of the idea,” Sethi told YNOT. “Where can I get all the information needed to know and get to know about toys? But mostly, the biggest question was ‘what is sexuality?’ Spending two years on not finding the right source and people just made the idea and resolution clear that we do need a place which not only educates, but makes people discover themselves.”
While here I’ve termed Tickle.life a “platform” as a convenient and commonly used shorthand, Sethi emphasized that her ambition for the site is to transcend platform status, serving more as something of a hub or point of convergence for a wide variety of other sex-related sites and resources.
“More than a platform, our vision is to become an ecosystem,” Sethi said. “Hence, we work with over 350 platforms, organizations and individuals who are working in the field of sexuality – and we are open for many more.”
While there are countless sites and storefronts where people can purchase products designed to enhance their sex lives, Sethi’s vision for Tickle.life is a more holistic approach to the fundamental questions of sexual identity.
“We believe that we need a front where anyone can come to discover themselves,” Sethi said. “Might that be a sextech player or a person looking for or figuring out their own sexuality – and that is what Tickle.Life is.”
While Tickle.life launched before the COVID-19 pandemic began shaking up the world, rather than blunt the growth of the ecosystem Sethi envisioned, the pandemic seems to have amplified and accelerated the community’s growth. Sethi said Tickle’s “traction increased many-fold during pandemic.”
“The pandemic made our ‘messaging’ and ‘need’ more clear, for us to create the right offerings to our target,” Sethi explained. “From the challenges point of view, the biggest I can talk about is the fragile state that being locked up globally brought, (giving) uncertainty to the rockstars working for us – and taking care of them became paramount to us.”
In many ways, it makes sense that the sudden development of what amounts to a nearly literal “captive audience” created by COVID-19 lockdowns would spur on the growth of a hub dedicated to sex and sexuality. After all, it represents billions of suddenly idle hands – hands connected both to the internet and to quizzical brains that dwell on questions of sex quite a bit, whether we want them to or not.
“The pandemic brought in with it more time for people to introspect and we grew at 25% month-on-month,” Sethi said. “Also, the feedback that we were getting and are still getting, considering that we are still in midst of a pandemic, is humongous.”
The robust growth of the Tickle.life community got Sethi and her team thinking about how to pilot their future and to ponder the kind of moves which could not only sustain that growth but boost it considerably.
“Looking at 2021 on our horizon, we took a big step of bringing the global ecosystem to India and providing Indian womxn with an opportunity to fill their gap between their need and actualization via all the resources that we accumulated and will be bringing in 2021 itself,” Sethi said. “So, all I will say (about anticipated growth) is wait for 2021 and all the amazing offerings we have planned while still retaining the quality and relationships that our growth has brought.”
Tickle.life’s move into the Indian market affords some of the broader adult industry an opening of sorts, a means of getting their products and sites in front of an audience that may be blocked from viewing their sites in a more direct fashion. And while Tickle.life likely isn’t the right forum for marketing porn, pleasure products and other adult fare could find a warm reception there.
“I would love for the industry that is looking to target Indian market, especially the womxn market, to visit tickle.life and to initiate the discussion with us, and for the people in India to visit our platform to avail benefits that the world has on offer for them,” Sethi said. “This is an exciting time and we would be happy to talk about our Industry-led podcast, our podcast listing service – the world’s first sex positive podcast hosting service – and also our global podcast directory and shop.”
While we all look forward to the day we can say COVID-19 is behind us, or at least sufficiently under control for life to return to something resembling normal, the growth of Tickle.life and Sethi’s ambitious agenda for the future remind us that even now, substantial opportunities exist for those bold enough to seize and nourish them.
