The year 2009 wasn’t that great for Matrimony portals as well but that still didn’t deter them from starting the year with a bang. So while bharatmatrimony launched video section called Bharatmatrimony.tv, Shaadi on the other hand took matrimony to TV itself with a tie up announcement with Star Plus.
Bharatmatrimony also went on a tie up spree early in the year by tying up with Idea cellular to reach mobile users and with Itz cash card for alternate payments. Bharatmatrimony also launched a unique feature of face recognition to facilitate (and maybe fool) users into finding their celebrity look alike partner. As the middle of the year approached Shaadi took the call of handing over their ad sales to a specialist in Admagnet.
Post mid year Consim Info i.e. Bharatmatrimony group announced its plans of deferring its IPO which was scheduled to be this year. Another indication of the slowdown impacting business across the board. Shaadi.com became innovative with its offering by venturing into the online pooja segment and conducting pooja’s for its subscribers. The big news of the year came when Bharatmatrimony filed a copyright infringement case against Google for its trademarked terms.
The year ended with online matrimony going up on the value chain by providing secure talk services for NRI grooms. This facility was introduced by Shaadi.com.
All in all the year was a year for Bharatmatrimony and Shaadi to be in the news. While competitors like Jeevansaathi and Simplymarry were simply
BharatMatrimony now holds a place in the ‘Red herring 100 Asia 2009′ award and has also been chosen from among more than a thousand known and active venture funds across the globe.
Though there is not much development in other matrimonial portals but
as per my best knowledge SimplyMarry has also start celebrating Matrimony day once a month to help the prospects in finding their life mates..
Existing matrimonial players seem to be looking for quick fixes to
revive the segment rather than re-evaluate their core offering. The
traditional approach of using the “classifieds” approach to matrimony
is quickly stagnating.
Youpid.in aims to evolve the space by applying familiar social networking
concepts to matrimony. We’ve taken the classical model of finding
matches through trusted sources and referrals and taken that online.
Friends and families coming together to help singles find each other
in a trusted environment via referrals.
Youpid is taking a “smarter” approach to online matrimony by eliminating the anonymity inherent in the online classfieds model by adding a social context and the missing element of trust. We hope that your recap of matrimonial services in 2010 will count Youpid.in as the game changer in the online matrimonial space.