The “E” in Marriage

Introduction

In India, wedding is the biggest event in the family calling forth every possible relation,
Impassioned sentiment and economic resource.
With the socializing sites like facebook, orkut etc coming up and catching with us so
fast, we had started living our lives on internet. Why not the quest for a life partners is
on internet? Many people connected to internet are searching their life partners through
internet rather than believing that marriages are made in heaven. These sites are free
or paid online matrimonial portals providing the various facilities to find your soul mate
at the ease of sitting in the room. The process of finding a suitable match for you is very
easy and fast through internet. Technically speaking, now marriages are made with the
click of mouse instead of in the heaven. Matrimonial sites are a perfect match of
technology and tradition.
Earlier relatives, friends and marriage bureaus were the parties involved in finding a
perfect partner for marriage. Matrimonial advertisements in print media were also used
to seek a good partner. But things are changing very fast as internet has penetrated in
Indian masses as more and more people are getting connected with internets The
internet media surpasses the geographical barriers and opens up more efficient ways
than the traditional ways for searching your life partner.

History

In Indian context and culture arranged marriages were popular very much as they brought
delight, happiness and the joy of meeting people who might otherwise not have met from
years. All relatives near and distant come together in such grand weddings. It was well
accepted by the young people For people who were not able to spend time and effort in
courtship arranged marriages were a good option. The parents and other relatives
became partners to find a perfect match.
Arranged marriages were also considered as traditions handed down through many
generations. Their parents were also married the same way of arranged marriage. So, it
was considered as the tradition which has to be followed without breaking
All of know how much difficult is to find a good life partner. Moreover each person decides
the way his/her life partner has to be found. Many find their soul mates themselves by
courtships. The today’s definition of marrying in an arranged manner is to seek advice
and service of a friend, parents or and marriage agency. All these requirements are being
provided by internet websites these days. These sites are designed keeping in mind the
main purpose of finding a compatible life mate, with many similarities and compatibility.
Matrimony Websites are designed to securely connect people with similar interests,
needs and ambitions. These similarities are varied ± religion, beliefs, education, values,
culture and work. This connection gives a chance to both to discover each other and
understand character traits and viewpoints of their partner.

The business of online matchmaking

Matrimonial sites are moneymaking businesses and managed by very experienced

 Advertisement on their website

The online matrimonial websites have business model to make a large database through
profile posting by the individuals and their concept of their ideal partners. Now after this
individuals are allowed to search the database to find the suitable matches and then
contact them Searching are allowed to all profile creators, but the details of the other
party are hidden. To see the contact details of the matched person, person has to
subscribe to the website. The subscription charges range from Rs. 1000 for a ³basic´
membership to Rs 5000 depending on the services provided
Competitive landscape

This business is lucrative as the returns are very high as compared to the
investments, but this business is not that easy to be handled by all. Otherwise many
entrepreneurs would have jumped into this business. The biggest challenge in front of
them is to meet the expectations of the individuals or so called clients. Almost all big
companies are driven by technological databases but still all profiles are went through
by their professionals to check the genuineness of all profiles. Bharat Matrimony
claims that although their registration and search services are technological driven,
but all profiles are hand checked to confirm the genuineness of them. This is because
this is the matter of life and fake profiles can make serious damages to some of the
individuals. This in turn can break trust of people and a drop in the revenues of these
sites is sure.
Selling good hopes and expectations to individuals is a tough task. Individuals have
various options for the matrimonial sites. So these sites have to individually advertise and
promote themselves on various media to beat the competition. To promote themselves
these sites partner with big companies with larger user base. Matrimonial websites like
Bharat Matrimony andShaadi.com have partnered with very good search engine sites
which rank high in search engines. BharatMatrimony.Com also has partnered with
MSN.Com so that all Hotmail users can see advertisements and links of Bharat
Matrimony website whenever they login to their hotmail accounts. So these websites
have huge advertising budget as they have to cover the film (Television) media too for
their advertisements. They also cover radio and newspapers and magazines. At the same
time they have to compete with the traditional methods of matchmaking such as
newspaper classifieds which keep eating their market share. Large matrimonial websites
are an umbrella of dozen of child websites which cater to a particular segment of the
society. This segmentation can be on the basis of language, religion, profession,divorced
etc. For example the Bharat Matrimony website is an umbrella of 14 matrimonial websites
which are based majorly on the languages spoken in India.
As this industry has lower entry barriers the competition has grown really high. The
number of players has increased substantially in the last few years.
The growing technology savvy generation is definitely considering online portals as one
of the most promising avenue to find the best match for them. Whether or not marriages
are made in heaven, but these days they are definitely made in heaven
Live Cases
Now days when everything has gone online to complete extent, match making and
marriages are also not far behind. The basic requirement of finding a suitable alliance
for your ward has created a successful business model of online matrimony services.
With nuclear families and divided societies, finding a suitable match is a major
task. Through Online Matrimonial sites like Shaadi.com, Bharatmatrimony.com people
register themselves with their photos and brief profiles on internet. This gives a
readymade platform for other users who have access to different profiles depending on
premium paid. These sites have extensive network spread throughout the country to
have an extensive coverage of various types of people so that you can find the one of
your types.
Every minute detail in sites like Shaadi.com are closely inspected and standardized.
This helps the member to take the informed decision about the right match making.
This is very important as it can affect the life of the person. Online matrimonial sites
work on trust factor whereby people take confident and assured decisions.
Basic memberships allow the people to create a free online account having a limited
access to fix number of profiles with an option to upgrade to premium users. Premium
users get access to full range of profiles with advanced research facilities having 15
criteria to choose from. Since initial investments are not high in such services,
matrimonial services usually achieve a break even in 6 months.
Premium members receive the contact information of the prospective match. Some
value added services like horoscope match making, arranging the theme based
marriages, complete handling of the marriage right from the starting till the end is
offered by these sites.
Legal Issues
Every business has its own kind of legal issues to deal with depending upon the territory
of the business. In the business of online matrimony we have issues ranging from
validity of the profiles registered, photos uploaded ,legal cases of fraud against the sites
by the people who get divorced after the marriages done through these sites.
Sometimes sites use fake and deceptive ads to woo the users. Companies sometime
break the Moral codes specified for such types of ads. In addition company should also
issue a caveat, if they know any legal cases are pending against their users. Verification
creates a lot of legal hassles.
 Apart from it these services face the regular issues of Online Safety, security of the
confidential information provided by the user. A legal action can be initiated in case
information reaches the unintended persons or party. Transparency, authenticity are the
major concern

Future of Online Matrimony

Online matrimony is a buzz word today. As per the research conducted by US based
agency Empower research, the online matrimony services will cross $ 63 million mark by
2010-11 with almost over 21 million users worldwide. Ease of use, cost savings and
convenience are the major factors for success of these sites.
With the growing popularity of E-Commerce, matrimonial sites have moved one notch
higher. The concept of web loyalty has emerged whereby these sites are looking for
providing experiential marketing to convert these onetime users to life time users
providing high value services like retirement plans, investment services, arranging family
outings etc.
Future activities to Address the Challenges Facing Indian, Matchmaking Sites
 More funds have to be allocated for data security, confidential exchange of
information, gaining the trust and confidence of the users, verifying the basic as well
as advance information about the profile registered.
 Companies should aim at targeting the specific user segments, specialized
services to different communities to have differential marketing.
 Umbrella Brand: Companies should target at extending the services they are
providing. Services like personal finance, consulting etc should be included in
portfolio to build an umbrella brand.

Googling - the next step of Online Matrimony Search

It is simply not enough to just contact a person and decide his/her life partner. Choosing
the life partner requires complete information about your partner. Therefore there should
be some other online medium to verify these. Googling has emerged as one of the key
source for the same. Online search about person’s profile on social networking sites like
orkut, facebook, twitter are the major source. Communities joined by the person, blog
posts created by the person, professional profile at linked in etc. It means virtually
searching the whole internet to get the relevant information about your partner.
One can get the real taste of the person by reading his blogs, comments posted on his
social profiles , kind of people he has befriend with.
Profiles are normally created to leave the positive impression about the person, therefore
we must check numeral mediums to check the common and contradicting views about the
person.

Offline Opportunities to connect people.

After having an online success these matrimonial services are trying to establish their
physical presence all over the country. They are trying to have direct connection with
the consumers through mediums as varied as TV Reality shows, magazines on
matrimony. Marriage bureaus are being set up at different locations to boost their
physical presence. These centers are specially aimed at areas having very low internet
penetration
Shaadi.com, Bharat matrimony are targeting the urban audience through television,
radio and direct to home services and rural areas by having specialized service centers
or marriage bureau.

Conclusion
Online matrimonial services are entering the maturity stage, there for innovation in
services have become the major factor. Connecting to more number of people and
providing the comprehensive services will hold the key to success