Stuck at home with limited avenues to network professionally due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many top CXOs as well as junior-to-mid level professionals are taking to specialised platforms like Lunchclub, CoffeeMug and Grab Chai to talk shop with strangers online.

These Artificial Intelligence-enabled platforms are essentially matchmakers that use AI to set up one-on-one meetings based on stated interests, objectives and preferred time slots.

The AI algorithm then connects two users on email through a concept called “warm intros” and sends them a calendar invite which is often accompanied by a link for video calling.

Unlike dating apps like Tinder or professional networking platforms like LinkedIn, these platforms are gated communities where a user can join only through invites from existing users or by applying to get registered.

In the past six months, users on these apps have grown 100% month-on-month and they have gained popularity among tech professionals and senior-to-mid-level executive across sectors.

Besides startup founders, product managers, senior professionals from venture capital firms like Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures, employees of tech companies like Amazon and booking.com, these platforms also have onboard psychologists, filmmakers and bakers.

Launched in March, CoffeeMug has over 1,500 active members comprising founders, investors and CXOs and gets 80-100 new members each day.

“We are well on our way to achieve the target to bring on board 5,000-7,000 handpicked members by the end of this year,” said its Delhi-based cofounder Dipti Tandon.

Grab Chai, founded by Indian tech workers Suhas Motwani and Aditya Mohanty, also launched in mid-March.

While still in beta stage with plans to officially launch in early October, it already has over 2,000 members from the tech community and outside who have cumulative done 5,000-6,000 virtual meetings through the platform so far.

The nationwide lockdown was the major motivation for Motwani and Mohanty to roll out Grab Chai for professional networking.

For CoffeeMug, it became a call for a quick shift in narrative and strategy.

“When we began conceptualising CoffeeMug in pre-Covid-19 times, we thought people would meet in person in a coffee shop,” said Tandon.

Within two weeks of launching though, the criteria changed.

In retrospect, Tandon feels it was only for the better.

“It allowed us as a platform to connect people across locations and countries. We started introducing the right kind of folks without location bias, and our members saw great value in it,” she added.

One-tenth of CoffeeMug’s current user base is from overseas markets like Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Lunchclub, a US-based platform founded in 2017, shifted from facilitating online matchmaking for offline meetings to facilitating virtual meetings full-time in March. It also became available in Mumbai and Bengaluru around the same time, according to users who have signed up on the platform in India.

The company recently raised $24.2 million in institutional funding at a valuation of $100 million, in a round led by VC firms Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lunchclub did not respond to ET’s queries.

For those who love meet new people and gain fresh perspectives, these platforms offer “curated serendipity”, said Sehaj Singh, a Chandigarh-based technology professional who works at Segment, a US company that builds customer data infrastructure for startups.

Singh has made connections via both Lunchclub and Grab Chai.

“It is the next level in communication for people who already leverage Twitter and LinkedIn to build professional connections,” he said.

These platforms, however, have a long way to go in ensuring that the AI-based matchmaking process gets better with each subsequent meeting.

Harshith Mallya, associate at VC firm Kalaari Capital, recently got matched with a former colleague on Lunchclub.

“We decided to skip the meeting as we had spoken quite recently. But I requested him to rate me five stars (much like Uber cabbies do) on the post-call feedback form, because there is some evidence that a higher social score on Lunchclub leads to better and more relevant matches,” Mallya said.

Not only can the system be gamed, but it also stands to become irrelevant, at least in India, where these platforms took off only after the lockdown came into the picture.

“I’m not sure I would want to meet strangers regularly through a virtual platform once things get back to normal,” said Nipun Jain, 23, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur currently living in Bhilai, her hometown in Chhattisgarh state.

“For me, they are a better replacement for webinars and online lectures at the moment. They will need a value-add or a change in narrative once all this is over.”