Well this is big news atleast for the matrimony space. Shaadi.com of People Group has pulled off a great tie up with Star Plus for a reality tv show on matrimony. This tv show will trace the journey of participants right from the in initial meeting, selection, discussion and drama, culminating into a Big Fat Indian Wedding.
The registration for the show will be driven via Shaadi.com which means increased traffic for Shaadi. Registrations will be open from 15th to 30th January 2009.
The show is open to all eligible single male and female Indian residents, who can speak fluent Hindi and are aged between 22 to 25 (for females) and 22 to 30 (for males).
This is a big (actually HUGE) move for Shaadi as this would increase brand presence and connect in a Big way through TV. The key question is how much did shaadi pay for this? Or did it pay at all? Because the positive impact of this will be both in terms of brand recall and increase subscriptions.
Bharatmatrimony had taken a shot at Online Video with Bharatmatrimony.tv and Im sure this move will make Bharatmatrimony think about a similar tie up with a rival TV channel. It will be fun though to see the matrimony wars on TV 
Excellent example of the difference between marketing and advertising. Most of the indian internet portals do advertising in the name of marketing and thats why always end up building and seeding loss making businesses.
This is not a novel idea back in 2001 / 2002 we had Madhuri Dixit hosting a similar show on Sony – Kahin Naa Kahin Koi Hai. Infact the show was a complete failure. have to wait and watch what different Shaadi people are going to do.
Hmmm…so finally Indian people’s preoccupation with marriage has been lapped up by Reality TV. Its an interesting mix…let’s see how it works out. though have to say that Shaadi.com has been nailing some really major brands for tie-up – Vodafone, Nokia, and now Star Plus. They got a great deal with the film tie up they did – you know – Life in a Metro. These guys sure know who to tie up with to create maximum brand recall…
This one is actually big..have seen zapak (Gillette cricket gaming) bigadda (Movie tie ups) and IBIBO (MTV Superstar) doing such tie ups but all of them would have been super expensive for sure. If Shaadi hasn’t paid great job, if they have still good job cause not only do I see this as a great brand recall / push but also a great connect.
Shaadi.com people are quite innovative, earlier it was Vodafone campaign and now Star Plus.
Gauging by how the trend has been, I think we can expect other matrimonial sites like bhartiya matrimony to soon follow, as usual.
Hey Rookie,
I just noticed that too. Don’t these bhartiya matrimony (or was it bhartiya matrimonials???) copy these shaadi guys everytime? I guess this is the fourth / fifth time these guys have done this.
I do recollect seeing some great outdoor hoardings and TV commercials on shaadi when these guys tied-up with vodafone. I tried accessing the wapsite on my mobile as well.
Can we see something ‘original’ from bhartiya matrimonials this time?
As mentioned by Ruchi, the show hosted by Madhuri was flop. It was early days of reality television in India, number of cable subscribers was less than today and people were just getting used to family sagas and drams on TV. These are different times and the concept seems interesting. Matchmaking/dating shows have been around for a while on MTV, the target was mostly young audience. This show will be more mainstream and will target prime time family audiences. We will have to wait and watch how it turns out to be. Good move by Shaadi nonetheless.
The concept sounds interesting. At least this reality show would be different. People are not actually keen on watching reality shows on singing, dancing and laughter anymore. Some observation – U’ve kept the minimum age criteria as 22 for both males and females, whereas the max age u’ve kept is 25 for females an 30 for males. Don’t you think here also it should be similar for both. You can either make it 28 or 30 for both – just a suggestion. Anyways, you’ll have your own criterias of selecting people though.