Online matrimony is moving beyond being just an internet platform for arranging plain-vanilla marriages -- they are now looking at niche alliances.
NEW DELHI: Online matrimony is moving beyond being just an internet platform for arranging plain-vanilla marriages -- they are now looking at niche alliances like between BPO or government employees, people who are HIV positive and those taking a second attempt at a married life.
While all of them have a simple aim of arranging a marriage at the click of a mouse, the all-rounders like shaadi.com, bharatmatrimony.com and jeevansathi.com are now being joined by specialists like bposhaadi.com, govtshaadi.com, thirtyplus.com and secondshaadi.com.
There are also the likes of positiveshaadi.com, aimed at people who are HIV positive and idontwantdowry.com, which claims to cater to only those who do not want to take a dowry.
Entry of niche players in this booming online wedding market is also leading to the existing players diversifying their portfolios with inclusion of value-added services like wedding planning and even free honeymoon packages.
"BharatMatrimony was established in 1997 and has got over 10 million registered members," its CEO J Murugavel said.
"The site apart from helping people plan their weddings also helps them create their own wedding website," said Murugavel, who himself found his bride through this website.
Some of the interesting innovative initiative in this business is Idontwantdowry.com, a Hyderabad-based portal that serves as a platform to find matches, sans dowry, while positiveshaadi.com provides suitable matches for HIV positive persons for whom finding a match is becoming a difficult task.
"The dowry demand from a man is in a way linked to the worth of an individual. We started the website to end this myth and provide a platform for like-minded progressive people can meet to create a future together," idontwantdowry.com founder Satya Naresh said.
Initially, idontwantdowry.com did not get good response, but now it has around 4,200 men and 2,400 women registered members -- most of whom are doctors and IT professionals.
Another interesting player is secondshaadi.com with over 20,000 registered users within 4 months of existence. It offers a free honeymoon to some of the success stories and also provides free marriage counselling.
"Divorce is becoming far more acceptable than it was a decade ago and as such people are looking at second marriages more positively," a marriage portal for second-timers Secondshaadi.com founder Vivek Pahwa said.
While 30 per cent of our registered users are woman, 58 per cent are from top seven Indian cities, 30 per cent from smaller cities and 12 per cent from overseas, showing all parts of the society are welcoming the idea, Pahwa added.
The University of Chicago found in a recent study that Indians getting married through wedding portals are less rigid about caste and mother tongue, as against those tying the knot through traditional channels.
Still, for those seeking to marry within communities, there is Canada-based punjabirishte.com helping Punjabis in India and overseas connect for marriage, biyeshaadi.com for Bengalis and Hyderabad-based adamsoreves.com for Christians. Bharatmatrimony is also planning to launch religion-based sites such as MuslimMatrimonial.com, SikhMatrimony.com, ChristianMatrimony.com and JainMatrimony.com.
Bharatmatrimony is also in final stages of a possible tie-up with Metropolis Health Service, chain of diagnostic services to provide pre-marital screening for diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B, facilitating processes which could never be taken up in existing social setups.
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