Online matrimony is a huge and lucrative market in India. Shaadi.com, BharatMatrimony, JeevanSaathi etc are all major players in this area and have hit the jackpot in terms of revenues from online matchmaking.
I was reading up on the TechCrunch post about PlentyOfFish disrupting the Match.com – the biggest and highly profitable dating site in the US – model.
That struck me as to when will the online matrimony market in India be disrupted. How long before another entrant comes in and provides free online matchmaking services in the Indian matrimony market. I am sure it will happen. The question is – how soon ? And how will these existing players react to it ?
check out BrahminsMatrimony.com which focuses Matrimony for brahmins
Paid model for online matrimony helps in reducing spam and bogus profiles. Also it kind of ensures better quality and completeness of profiles. There are actually quite a few free matrimonial sites available in India now. But most of them suffer from spams and poor quality profiles. Also privacy becomes a concern.
I don’t argue against the possibility of a disruptive model for online matri in India. But I feel that it requires much more than just making things free.
Ruban,
Its free to register on Shaadi / BharatMAtrimony. Only when you intend to initiate a contact with the other person do you need to pay. So, even these sites are susceptible to bogus profiles. If you surf through some of of the profiles, you’ll wonder how a 35+ looking lady can be actually 23 years of age.
And I’ve a very close friend who had a nasty experience with a bogus profile on Shaadi – he met a girl, started talking and when it came to finalizing the engagement, the guy found out that she was already married in India. And I’m not making up any bit of this.
I totally agree — such a free model would warrant stronger privacy controls and some way to weed out spammers.
You are right, setting up a profile is free. But what the pay-to-contact model is ensuring to a good extent is that it is keeping some of spammer-predators caged. They cannot do harm unless someone enters into their cage by initiating the contact.
The instances that you have mentioned are really scary. As with most web products (email, search etc), even with matri the ability to handle/filter spam effectively can become one of the key differentiators.