All those in the inner circle of Pankti Chheda, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur and founder of Moving Meals, know that she’s more of “voice-note kind of person” than a compulsive texter. This preference extends to online dating too. And for good reason, she says. “There are a lot of fake profiles and catphishing that go on [on dating apps]. So, I prefer to hear someone speak. Voice helps you visualise a person better than text would, and gives you a sense of whether they are legit.”

Ever since she started using the voice feature on dating, friend-finding and networking app Bumble, Chheda has had a fairly pleasant experience. “I matched with some of the most interesting people, including a scientist who researches underwater acoustics and works with whale calls. She loved my voice, and as somebody who works with sounds, she suggested doing a spectral analysis [of my voice].” Voice researchers use the spectrogram as a tool for analysing vocal output, along with identifying the strength and frequencies of formants or resonant frequencies of the vocal tract. “The results showed that when I say anything that has an ‘s’, I display a unique, signature sound that most people don’t. It made me suddenly feel very sexy,” she laughs.