Recap 2008: Online Matrimony Space
The year 2008 has been an eventful one for the online matrimony space which is dominated by major players like Shaadi (People Interactive), Bharatmatrimony (consim Info), Simplymarry (Times Group) and Jeevansathi (Infoedge). The year saw expansion offline and in forms of distribution for matrimony players and by the year end some matrimony players were found to be in financial trouble as well.
The year started with the news of Bharatmatrimony (Consim Info) raising 11.75 million dollars from Mayfield Fund, Yahoo and Canaan Partners. Then the latest entrant Simplymarry launched an online magazine to give competition to Shaadi and Bharatmatrimony’s respective online magazines. This was followed by a research report by Juxt consult that stated that there were 12 million users for matrimony services in the online space and that Online matrimony is worth Rs 140 crore, up from Rs 58 crore in 2006.
Consim Info the company behind Bharatmatrimony was very aggressive with its marketing spends and expansion plans as it looked to invest 50 crores in marketing spends during the year. Besides for the ad spend there was physical presence expansion as well as Jeevansathi launched its brand of matrimony points called Match points. Besides for the expansion plans bharatmatrimony also added health check up features given the aids and other diseases and disability situation to bring more value to matrimony. Definitely a good addon to matrimony.
By the mid of the year the battle of matrimony had become bitter especially between bharatmatrimony and shaadi.com as both launched identical features and forged identical partnerships as well. They both tied up with a DTH partner at the same time. They both tied up with a mobile operator as well for mobile matrimony. Also they both launched personalised services as a feature.
While this matrimony war was on between shaadi and bharatmatrimony.. jeevansathi quietly launched a gtalk feature and also a mobile version. There was also a regional touch to matrimony with Malayala Manorama launching M4marry in the south markets. The year ended with the launch of a vertical search engine for matrimony in Bandhan.com.
The highlight of the year though was the slowdown which impacted one and all and also threw up the concerns over the financial health of some of the matrimony players. The last news in from matrimony players was the launch of elite matrimony by Bharatmatrimony which is an exclusive portal for elite people wanting to spend extra cash to get married. Not sure in this downturn even the elitist would like to do that?
All in all the year ended on a sad note for Matrimony players. Next year promises to be a challenging on though as many say that matrimony can’t be affected by the slowdown afterall people wont stop getting married or looking to marry would they?
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Marriages are big occasions in India, and therefore big business and if I can call it an industry then it is one of the few with a complete Pan Indian reach.. given this fact and the ease that Internet provides in getting a lot of marriage related stuff done right from choosing the bride and groom this niche is not going to go anywhere. However, it needs consolidation and in the future niche services in related verticals and value added services might decide who will enjoy the honeymoon and hold the biggest piece of pie
@Maneesh Madambath:
Looks like you are talking from experience. Got any mallu girl from M4marry.com?
Did they pay you to brand their site in your comment those m4marry guys