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Love @ first
sight
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Despite the all-pervasive
Internet, there are still only a few dotcoms that
have turned into sustainable business models, like
some travel and porn sites, google, ebay and
yahoo. Add one more to the list, though: online
matchmaking of Indians, which is already a
multi-million dollar enterprise bringing people
from across the world together for life.
The arrival of new technologies, which
Indians have a penchant for picking up, has made a
difference to the country's marriage bazaar.
Predictably, it is Indians living abroad who delve
more into the ready pool of potential spouses
floating on the Net. Internationally, the
equivalent of Indian marriage websites is dating
sites. But unlike dating sites, which are more of
a window for casual encounters, online matrimonial
sites for Indians are serious business.
Innumerable matrimonial sites such as
bharatmatrimony.com, shaadi.com and
matrimonials.com have mushroomed in the past few
years, providing an easy avenue to hunt down the
right match. There is also the powerful online
presence of national newspapers in this segment.
The Hindu, for example, has a dedicated base of
non-resident Indian (NRI) subscribers looking for
suitable brides and grooms.
The websites,
in turn, make money through advertising revenues
and memberships that run into hundreds of
thousands of Indians worldwide. The online
experience has been innovated over time, providing
value added services to their clients, including
arranging face-to-face meetings. Predictably, it
is the 18-35 age group that forms the main online
subscriber base. The numbers continue to grow.
Bharatmatrimony, which was set up in 1997, claims
close to million registered brides and groom with
over 25,000 successfully matched couples. The
website provides 24-hour online chat support and
has offices and franchises across India and the
world. Similar numbers are proffered by other
websites as well.
Bharatmatrimony charges
$25 for three months, but premium memberships cost
$45. Shaadi.com charges $20, also for three
months. The sites categorize profiles according to
Indian states, language, religion, caste, resident
and NRI status. There also is a section for brides
and grooms with mental or physical disabilities. A
range of services is offered, including an Indian
wedding planner, Indian marriage rituals,
astrology, wedding directory, beauty advice and
fashion articles.
A survey by the Internet
and Online Association a year back revealed that 4
million Indian online subscribers worldwide
preferred the Internet as an important forum for
linking up with a partner. The Indian market for
online marriages, which stood at US$1.2 million in
2003-2004, is expected to grow to $16 million by
2007-2008. "Marriage is big business here," said
Hitesh Kumar, head of Bridal Affairs in Delhi. "It
is one of the best businesses to be in, as
[weddings occur year round], and is a booming
sector." India's humongous wedding industry has
been valued at $11 billion, and growing at 25%.
The budget of an average Indian wedding can range
from $4,000 to $400,000. It is estimated that over
$1 billion was spent in a period of only one
month, in November 2004.
To understand the
business of marriage, it may be worthwhile to
understand the way Indians marry. Despite all the
talk of a globalized economy and Indians as global
citizens, 80% of marriages in India are still
"arranged" by parents. The process involves a
periods of discussion wherein the pros and cons of
the girl and the boy are weighed and finally a
mutual agreement arrived at. Caste, horoscopes,
and lineage, apart from money, come into play.
Dowry is very much a part of this
institutionalized process, with the girls' parents
often parting with a substantial amount of their
savings to garner the best boy. Management
graduates from top institutes, such as the IIMs
(Indian Institute of Management), young Indian
Administrative Service officers and NRIs,
especially with degrees from the IITs (Indian
Institute of Technology) settled in US or Europe,
are considered prize catches. Cyberspace now plays
a key role in the fruition of this process, with
parents making it a point to be savvy with
technology when it comes to matters of matrimony.
There are, however, increasing examples of
eligible bachelors, both boys and girls, posting
their profiles on the Internet themselves,
independent of parental involvement.
If
there is one activity on which Indians don't mind
blowing their money, at times their life savings,
it is the weddings of their children. The months
of September-March constitute the peak marriage
season, given the overlap of favorable weather
conditions and auspicious days declared by the
pundits, without whose consultation no marriage
can be solemnized in India. Hundreds of thousands
of marriages take place across the country, most
planned with meticulous attention to detail,
decorations, lights and bridal trousseau,
accompanied by exchange of expensive gifts,
purchases of jewelry, feasts and theme parties at
banquet halls, hotels and farmhouses.
Wedding management experts and
professionals have entered the fray offering to
organize the elaborate and long drawn out
celebrations under one platform. The arrangements
range from the more peripheral coordination of
travel and lodging requirements of guests to the
actual putting in place of the sangeet, the
mandatory song-and-dance program. In Delhi, over
12,000 weddings were held in a single day on
November 27 and in the city of Ahmedabad in
Gujarat 20,000 weddings took place on December 15.
One of the flashiest and most expensive
marriage celebrations that made news across the
world a year back was hosted by Indian steel
magnate Laxmi Mittal for his daughter at the
Palace of Versailles in France, in which he spent
over $60 million that included a 20-page silver
invitation card. Another event that made headlines
was the twin wedding of the sons of industrialist
Subroto Roy, the owner of Sahara India, in
Lucknow. Roy's company sponsors the Indian cricket
team, runs an airline, 24-hour TV channels, and is
involved in real estate development.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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