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Late at night, when her family is fast asleep, 25-year-old Priyanka Agarwal keeps her date with the Internet. After she?s done checking her e-mail, catching up with friends in various e-groups and the day?s news, she turns to her favourite matrimonial websites. Having posted her own profile on the Net two weeks ago, she checks out for eligible men. She has short-listed several candidates and is about to subscribe to one of the websites. That will allow her to get in touch with the men ? one of whom may turn out to be ?The One?.
Priyanka?s family is hoping for a match from the Gujarati Agarwal community in her city, but she has other plans. Having met quite a few ?specimens? (as she calls them) culled out by her parents and extended family, she has taken matters into her own hands. Earlier, she didn?t like the idea of posting her profile on the free-for-all Internet but recently a close friend met a guy through a marriage website and eventually married him. It also helps that the marriage websites don?t reveal her e-mail address. ?After all, if I find someone interesting, I can keep up a correspondence with that person without having the pressure to meet him immediately. After chatting on the Net and exchanging e-mails, if I find someone whose ideas and attitude match mine, then why not?? she asks.
Why not, indeed? Thousands of Internet-savvy youngsters in India are asking just that, even as their parents post matrimonial ads in newspapers or ask the trusted family match-maker to select eligible candidates for their son/daughter. The Internet has replaced the coffeeshop (or family drawing room, depending on how conservative your parents are) as the first meeting place for thousands of people. Having said yes to an arranged marriage, they see no reason why it can?t be of the do-it-yourself variety.
?Finding someone all by yourself, after going through a number of profiles and exchanging e-mails, is the second best thing to falling in love spontaneously,? says 30-year-old Shubhamay Moitra, engaged to be married to Pritika Kar, who he met through the good offices of the Internet. They think of matrimonial websites as a place to meet people, albeit with the specific end of marriage in mind, and say it can be compared to dating services or websites offering this. ?At the end of the day, it is preferable to seeing yourself described in a tiny one-column box in the newspaper classifieds as ?26, 5?3? fair convent-educated MBA girl working with reputed IT firm seeking alliance with qualified Bengali boy from good family?,? says an irate Pritika.
Certainly, the marriage websites give you more space. Matrimonial websites allow you to post a photograph and also a short profile stating loves, hates and interests. All are search-enabled, and by specifying parameters, users can choose to see only those profiles that interest them at a basic level. In most of the popular sites, such as Shaadi.com, BharatMatrimony.com, Rediff Matchmaker and sify.com, users are allowed to post their profiles free of cost and can also select prospective partners from their profiles. It is only when they decide to get in touch with the short-listed prospectives that they must pay the subscription fee. On average, that?s around Rs 800 to Rs 1,000 for a three-month membership.
The proliferation of marriage websites shows just how popular the idea has become. There are around 1,500 websites furiously trying to establish their credentials as cyberspace matchmakers. At the top are the biggies that offer their services to different communities anywhere in the world. Then, there are niche operations that restrict themselves to one community ? whether it be Gujratimilan.com, a ?matrimonial Website for Gujarati Community? (sic) or Nikah.com, ?The No.1 Muslim matrimonials service provider?. ?Considering the significance the institution of marriage holds in the life of an Indian, Internet matrimony was sure to be a winner,? feels Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO, BharatMatrimony.com.
Mind you, it?s not only the young who are searching for partners through matrimonial websites. The relatively liberalised atmosphere of the Internet and the sheer immensity of its scope have made marriage easier for many who wouldn?t be ideal candidates in the eyes of conservative matchmakers. Be it 40-plus divorcees, widowers or those with disabilities, the Internet makes it possible for them to reach out to the world.
Even conservative families are waking up to the possibilities of the Internet. The older generation too, has realised that online matrimonials can be used to supplement other ways of finding a suitable match. The breakdown of the joint family structure, which ensured that matches literally rolled off the tongues of all-knowing aunts and grandmothers, has also probably diminished resistance to do-it-yourself cyber-efforts.
Take a look at Shaadi.com, the website that says it has 2 million-plus users and 100,000 success stories. It has recently launched a specialised service Shaadi Point with the goal of helping non-Internet users (primarily parents) get the advantages of online matchmaking. Shaadi Point is planned as a network of 250 centres across the country, and its representatives will help families locate matches. ?I have reservations about posting photographs on the Internet, and I don?t know how useful it will be, but when my daughter wanted to do it, I let her, although we?ve put an ad in the paper and alerted relatives also,? says Sharmila Khanna from Delhi, who is looking for a suitable boy for her 26-year-old daughter.
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| Chat to catch |
| Are you a techno-junkie who isn’t satisfied with sitting down in front of the PC to find a partner? How about matrimony through instant messaging on your mobile phone? That’s the new service on offer from Shaadi.com which recently launched Shaadi.com Messenger. The service helps match-seekers chat with potential partners online. Unlike most messengers on the Net, Shaadi.com Messenger does not need to be downloaded. When a Shaadi.com member is BharatMatrimony.com has up and running an innovative way of finding prospective brides and grooms for people on the move. It has tied-up with cellular operators like Airtel, Hutch (Orange in Mumbai), Idea and Oasis to start a service called Matrimony on Mobile. This lets mobile users contact prospective brides and grooms by simply sending an SMS to “5050”. Then, they send an SMS with the keyword ‘FIND’ to the same number, keyword ‘VIEW’ to view the details of a matching profile and the keyword ‘CONTACT’ to get in touch with the right person. This is called love in the Age of |
Indranil and Sraboni Dhar?s story testifies to the fact that families are getting used to Internet-arranged marriages. A year ago, both were in different US cities, Indranil as a software engineer and Sraboni as a literature student at UCLA. Her brother secretly posted Sraboni?s profile on BharatMatrimony.com. When Indranil?s profile came up, he told Sraboni about the whole conspiracy. ?Initially I was reluctant, but my brother and parents persuaded me to get in touch with this guy. I could always back out at any point, they pointed out, and since we would interact through messaging and e-mails, it would all remain relatively anonymous,? says Sraboni. Today, they are happily married, and contemplating a return to India.
It?s a win-win situation, for the users as well as websites offering these services. A recent study conducted by the Internet and Online Association, a non-profit monitoring body for Indian websites, gives the thumbs up to matrimonial websites. The study shows that there are around four million online matrimonial search subscribers and that online matrimonial classifieds are one of the biggest paid content generators on the Net. While it pegs the market size at a modest Rs 20 crore for the current financial year, it predicts that it?ll grow beyond Rs 80 crore by 2007-08.
In terms of subscriber base, the growth is more impressive. While about 2.25 million subscribers logged on to matrimonial websites in June 2003, the number grew to four million by October 2004 ? a whopping leap of 77 per cent in little more than a year. Individual websites also tell of the same success story, especially the biggest ones. According to Anupam Mittal, president and CEO of Shaadi.com whose encounter with a marriage broker in Mumbai led him to start the highly successful website, the growth has been ?phenomenal?. In January 1997, Shaadi.com had 45,000-plus members. In January 2002, this number grew to 200,000. By February 2004, Shaadi.com had 1.5 million-plus members and today, they peg the number of members with registered profiles on the website at two million.
Rediff.com?s matrimonial division, Rediff Matchmaker, has seen the same spurt in interest in online matrimony over the past year. Says Debasis Ghosh, head, public affairs, Rediff.com India, ?Rediff Matchmaker is one of the fastest-growing communities on the Rediff website. There?s been a two-fold growth in our matrimonial subscriber base in 2004.?
Besides playing matchmaker, some websites also offer additional services and offline activities. ShaadiTimes.com, partner site to Shaadi.com, has on its panel advisors on everything from beauty and fitness to sex. It also has sections dedicated to wedding planning, customs and rituals, fashion, celebrity weddings and an international directory of wedding services. Sites like rishtaa.com and jeevansaathi.com also offer travel advice and honeymoon packages to premium members and organise meets between members from a specific community or city.
To facilitate the search for a suitable partner, the database on these sites is sorted into sections using parameters such as country, community, region, religion and city. Bharatmatrimony.com, that claims over 3 million users with more than 300,000 successful marriages began life as TamilMatrimony.com in 1996 when Janakiraman noticed that the most popular section of his Indian community portal Sysindia.com was the matrimonial link. Today, about 30 per cent of the website?s customers are based abroad, with the number increasing daily.
?It?s the power of the Internet, which transcends regions, states and linguistic groups, caste, gender, and religion, that has made Internet matrimony the success story it is today,? says Janakiraman.
The age-old clich? of love knowing no boundaries, seldom replicated in the everyday world, has perhaps finally met its match in the seamless world of the Internet.
