LE TEMPS – Jan 8 – Murugavel Janakiraman founded Matrimony.com in 2000, and successfully launched its IPO in September. His website, which employs 750 people, has its headquarters on the top story of a skyscraper in the southeastern city of Chennai. The originality of Matrimony.com is that it is actually made up of 300 niche sites, each tailored for a different social group. "n India, 95% of marriages take place between people of the same caste or community," Janakiraman explains. There are sites for Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains and the main Hindu castes. There is even a site for Mangliks, who according to Hindu astrology are unlucky marriage partners, and for military personnel, divorced people, elites and others. "Segmentation is one of the keys to our success," Janakiraman explains. His websites has led to ~1M marriages, and 3M members pay to find a soulmate on the platform. A team of 20 analysts and 200 engineers works on selecting the elements of potential matches from a database with information on 30M people who have used the website over the past 17 years. "We are able to predict the success of potential matches," says M. R. Chandrasekar, one of the site's managers.
by Vanessa Dougnac
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