If you had asked Murugavel Janakiraman early on in life about his future plans, the last thing he would have said was that he intended to be a matchmaker. In those days, matchmakers were largely women — aunts who blossomed at every marriage ceremony trying to set up as many matches as possible.

Today, Janakiraman is founder & CEO of the Bharatmatrimony Group. And he is making more matches than the most active aunt ever did.

The initial years weren’t easy; Janakiraman has traversed a long and arduous path to reach where he is today. The first one in his family to study past Higher Secondary, he started his academic life in a vernacular-medium school in Chennai. The school doesn’t even exist now.

Moving on from there, he enrolled at the Muthialpet Higher Secondary for his Plus Two. The drive to do well in life were sown in Janakiraman as a child. “The kids who did well in our area came from rich backgrounds and were educated at elite English-medium schools. Ours was a government school and I wanted to prove that a government school kid could make it big too,” says Janakiraman.

While doing his BStats at Presidency College, Chennai, he got interested in computers. After completing his masters from the University of Madras, Janakiraman started his career at the Chennai-based Nucleus Software. After that he went to the US as a consultant for several companies like HCL and Polaris on various projects. It is there that he acquired valuable insights into Internet technologies.

The Internet was still a developing arena in those days. Janakiram soon realised that there was huge potential in the matrimony space. It started with one computer from his home in New Jersey. The initial investment was $1,000 and Janakiraman was the programmer, web designer and customer care personnel all rolled into one.

Starting with baby steps, Janakiraman slowly spread his wings in India by setting up base in Chennai. Seeing the response to his website, Janakiraman decided to take the plunge. He shifted to Chennai in 2000.

This was hardly an auspicious time for the software industry. Year 2000 was the era of the dotcom bust. Says Janakiraman: “The biggest challenge was to instil faith in the virtual world and get people back on the Net.”

Janakiraman’s formula for success was to promote BharatMatrimony as a user-friendly site, which would also undertake validation of clients’ antecedents on request. This strategy has paid off as India Online 2006, a recent study by JuxtConsult, has endorsed BharatMatrimony.com as a clear leader in the online matrimony space with over 33 per cent of users preferring it over others.

Janakiraman follows a simple guiding principle in his business. “Make an honest attempt and throw the stone. Whether the mango falls or not should not be your look out.” This attitude of being able to accept any outcome with composure has ensured that he can concentrate completely on the job at hand.

The hard work and sincerity has paid off and BharatMatrimony as a brand has gone from strength to strength. Recently, it received funding to the tune of $8.65 million from Yahoo! and Canaan Partners. The group has also announced plans to expand its presence in the global personals space and intends to open offices in the UK and in key Southeast Asian markets to cater to the Indian diaspora. It also expects to increase the number of BharatMatrimony Centres, its offline initiative, from 50 to over 300 by 2008.

“We want to be the No. 1 Internet portal,” says Janakiraman. And, as part of it, BharatMatrimony has expanded into other promising online businesses. The group has successfully launched ClickJobs.com (a premium jobs portal), IndiaProperty.com (a portal for Indian real estate), IndiaAutomobile.com (an online automobile supermarket), and IndiaList.com (a classifieds portal).

People who have got married through BharatMatrimony will surely trust it to get a job or buy a house.

Based on a conversation with Shibani Chattopadhyay in Calcutta