In India, wedding is the biggest event in the family calling forth every possible relation,Impassioned sentiment and economic

resource.With the socializing sites like facebook, orkut etc coming up and catching with us sofast, we had started living our lives on internet. Why not the quest for a life partners ison internet? Many people connected to internet are searching their life partners throughinternet rather than believing that marriages are made in heaven. These sites are freeor paid online matrimonial portals providing the various facilities to find your soul mateat the ease of sitting in the room. The process of finding a suitable match for you is veryeasy and fast through internet. Technically speaking, now marriages are made with theclick of mouse instead of in the heaven. Matrimonial sites are a perfect match of technology and tradition.Earlier relatives, friends and marriage bureaus were the parties involved in finding aperfect partner for marriage. Matrimonial advertisements in print media were also usedto seek a good partner. But things are changing very fast as internet has penetrated inIndian masses as more and more people are getting connected with internets Theinternet media surpasses the geographical barriers and opens up more efficient waysthan the traditional ways for searching your life partner. History In Indian context and culture arranged marriages were popular very much as they broughtdelight, happiness and the joy of meeting people who might otherwise not have met fromyears. All relatives near and distant come together in such grand weddings. It was wellaccepted by the young people For people who were not able to spend time and effort incourtship arranged marriages were a good option. The parents and other relativesbecame partners to find a perfect match.Arranged marriages were also considered as traditions handed down through manygenerations. Their parents were also married the same way of arranged marriage. So, itwas considered as the tradition which has to be followed without breaking. All of know how much difficult is to find a good life partner. Moreover each person decidesthe way his/her life partner has to be found. Many find their soul mates themselves bycourtships. The todays definition of marrying in an arranged manner is to seek adviceand service of a friend, parents or and marriage agency. All these requirements are beingprovided by internet websites these days. These sites are designed keeping in mind themain purpose of finding a compatible life mate, with many similarities and compatibility.Matrimony Websites are designed to securely connect people with similar interests,needs and ambitions. These similarities are varied religion, beliefs, education, values,culture and work. This connection gives a chance to both to discover each other andunderstand character traits and viewpoints of their partner. The business of online match making Matrimonial sites are moneymaking businesses and managed by very experiencedbusinessmen, but the biggest expectation they need to meet is the expectations of thecustomer. It becomes harder because these matrimonial sites are selling hopes andexpectations to people logging on these sites. At the same moment they have to makemoney through advertising other firms.The revenue model of these websites can be categorized in 4 groups. Advertisementontheirwebsite Client building

By subscription to people

E-Commerce The business model The online matrimonial websites have business model to make a large database throughprofile posting by the individuals and their concept of their ideal partners. Now after thisindividuals are allowed to search the database to find the suitable matches and thencontact them Searching are allowed to all profile creators, but the details of the other party are hidden. To see the contact details of the matched person, person has tosubscribe to the website. The subscription charges range from Rs. 1000 for a basicmembership to Rs 5000 depending on the services provided. Competitive landscape This business is lucrative as the returns are very high as compared to theinvestments, but this business is not that easy to be handled by all. Otherwise manyentrepreneurs would have jumped into this business. The biggest challenge in front of them is to meet the expectations of the individuals or so called clients. Almost all bigcompanies are driven by technological databases but still all profiles are went throughby their professionals to check the genuineness of all profiles. Bharat Matrimonyclaims that although their registration and search services are technological driven,but all profiles are hand checked to confirm the genuineness of them. This is becausethis is the matter of life and fake profiles can make serious damages to some of theindividuals. This in turn can break trust of people and a drop in the revenues of thesesites is sure.Selling good hopes and expectations to individuals is a tough task. Individuals havevarious options for the matrimonial sites. So these sites have to individually advertise andpromote themselves on various media to beat the competition. To promote themselvesthese sites partner with big companies with larger user base. Matrimonial websites likeBharat Matrimony andShaadi.com have partnered with very good search engine siteswhich rank high in search engines. BharatMatrimony.Com also has partnered withMSN.Com so that all Hotmail users can see advertisements and links of BharatMatrimony website whenever they login to their hotmail accounts. So these websiteshave huge advertising budget as they have to cover the film (Television) media too for their advertisements. They also cover radio and newspapers and magazines. At the sametime they have to compete with the traditional methods of matchmaking such asnewspaper classifieds which keep eating their market share. Large matrimonial websitesare an umbrella of dozen of child websites which cater to a particular segment of thesociety. This segmentation can be on the basis of language, religion, profession,divorcedetc. For example the Bharat Matrimony website is an umbrella of 14 matrimonial websiteswhich are based majorly on the languages spoken in India.As this industry has lower entry barriers the competition has grown really high. Thenumber of players has increased substantially in the last few years.The growing technology savvy generation is definitely considering online portals as oneof the most promising avenue to find the best match for them. Whether or not marriagesare made in heaven, but these days they are definitely made in heave

Live Cases Now days when everything has gone online to complete extent, match making andmarriages are also not far behind. The basic requirement of finding a suitable alliancefor your ward has created a successful business model of online matrimony services.With nuclear families and divided

societies, finding a suitable match is a major task. Through Online Matrimonial sites like Shaadi.com, Bharatmatrimony.com peopleregister themselves with their photos and brief profiles on internet. This gives areadymade platform for other users who have access to different profiles depending onpremium paid. These sites have extensive network spread throughout the country tohave an extensive coverage of various types of people so that you can find the one of your types.Every minute detail in sites like Shaadi.com are closely inspected and standardized.This helps the member to take the informed decision about the right match making.This is very important as it can affect the life of the person. Online matrimonial siteswork on trust factor whereby people take confident and assured decisions.Basic memberships allow the people to create a free online account having a limitedaccess to fix number of profiles with an option to upgrade to premium users. Premiumusers get access to full range of profiles with advanced research facilities having 15criteria to choose from. Since initial investments are not high in such services,matrimonial services usually achieve a break even in 6 months.Premium members receive the contact information of the prospective match. Somevalue added services like horoscope match making, arranging the theme basedmarriages, complete handling of the marriage right from the starting till the end isoffered by these sites.Legal IssuesEvery business has its own kind of legal issues to deal with depending upon the territoryof the business. In the business of online matrimony we have issues ranging fromvalidity of the profiles registered, photos uploaded ,legal cases of fraud against the sitesby the people who get divorced after the marriages done through these sites.Sometimes sites use fake and deceptive ads to woo the users. Companies sometimebreak the Moral codes specified for such types of ads. In addition company should alsoissue a caveat, if they know any legal cases are pending against their users. Verificationcreates a lot of legal hassles. Apart from it these services face the regular issues of Online Safety, security of theconfidential information provided by the user. A legal action can be initiated in caseinformation reaches the unintended persons or party. Transparency, authenticity are themajor concern Future of Online Matrimony Online matrimony is a buzz word today. As per the research conducted by US basedagency Empower research, the online matrimony services will cross $ 63 million mark by2010-11 with almost over 21 million users worldwide. Ease of use, cost savings andconvenience are the major factors for success of these sites.With the growing popularity of E-Commerce, matrimonial sites have moved one notchhigher. The concept of web loyalty has emerged whereby these sites are looking for providing experiential marketing to convert these onetime users to life time usersproviding high value services like retirement plans, investment services, arranging familyoutings etc.Future activities to Address the Challenges Facing Indian, Matchmaking Sites More funds have to be allocated for data security, confidential exchange of information, gaining the trust and confidence of the users, verifying the basic as wellas advance information about the profile registered.

Companies should aim at targeting the specific user segments, specializedservices to different communities to have differential marketing. Umbrella Brand: Companies should target at extending the services they areproviding. Services like personal finance, consulting etc should be included inportfolio to build an umbrella brand.

Googling the next step of Online Matrimony Search

It is simply not enough to just contact a person and decide his/her life partner. Choosingthe life partner requires complete information about your partner. Therefore there shouldbe some other online medium to verify these. Googling has emerged as one of the keysource for the same. Online search about persons profile on social networking sites likeorkut, facebook, twitter are the major source. Communities joined by the person, blog posts created by the person, professional profile at linked in etc. It means virtuallysearching the whole internet to get the relevant information about your partner.One can get the real taste of the person by reading his blogs, comments posted on hissocialprofiles,kindofpeoplehehasbefriendwith.Profiles are normally created to leave the positive impression about the person, thereforewemustchecknumeralmediumstocheckthecommonandcontradictingviewsabout thep erson. Offline Opportunities to connect people. After having an online success these matrimonial services are trying to establish their physical presence all over the country. They are trying to have direct connection withthe consumers through mediums as varied as TV Reality shows, magazines onmatrimony. Marriage bureaus are being set up at different locations to boost their physical presence. These centers are specially aimed at areas having very low internetpenetrationShaadi.com, Bharat matrimony are targeting the urban audience through television,radio and direct to home services and rural areas by having specialized service centersor marriage bureau. Conclusion Online matrimonial services are entering the maturity stage, there for innovation inservices have become the major factor. Connecting to more number of people andproviding the comprehensive services will hold the key to success