Online Personals Watch Weekly News Summary, May 11th, 2009
Site launches, BharatMatrimony expansion into new markets and religions, Userplane demise, CrazyBlindDate to be integrated into OkCupid, prison dating, Wealthy Men on reality TV.
Category: BharatMatrimony
BharatMatrimony Eyes South Asia Market
FINANCIAL CHRONICLE — Apr 30 — Matchmaking website BharatMatrimony plans to grow by about 50% this year and will expand its online matrimony services to a couple of south Asian markets. Owned by Consim Info, the online matrimonial site is considering tapping countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where the institution of marriage is quite similar to that in India. Most of the company’s services and business models that have been successful in India will be replicated in these foreign markets. BharatMatrimony recently launched religion-based matchmaking services such as ChristianMatrimony and SikhMatrimony. It also launched personalised services for the super-rich and celebrities called EliteMatrimony.com and BM Privilege.
The full article was originally published at Financial Chronicle, but is no longer available.
Bharat Matrimony Pairs Users With Celebrity Lookalikes
ELECTRIC NEWS — Mar 23 — Bharat Matrimony offers registered users a special 'facial search' software that scans the features of its 15m users. You can't search for an Indian version of Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt. Instead, users are restricted to the site's gallery of leading Indian celebrities to pick from. The face of Aishwarya, a former Miss World winner, is the most requested.
The full article was originally published at Electric News, but is no longer available.
Matrimonial Portals
KNOWLEDGE WHARTON — Nov 13 — Anupam Mittla, founder of Shaadi.com and
Murugavel Janakiraman, founder and CEO of
BharatMatrimony.com say that over the past five years, the
online matrimonial market in India, which they estimate to be currently
around US$50 million, has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of
50% to 70%. The India Online 2008 Matrimony report identifies
Janakiraman and Mittal as market leaders with nearly 70% of the market
between them in terms of the user base. The industry has a host of
small players, including those with extremely niche positioning like secondshaadi.com (for second marriages), idontwantdowry.com (for those against the practice of dowry), h1bmarriages.com (for non-resident Indians and technical professionals), positivesaathi.com
(for HIV-positive people) and so on. FULL ARTICLE @ KNOWLEDGE WHARTON
See all posts on BharatMatrimony
See all posts on Shaadi
See all posts on SecondShaadi
Online Matrimonial Services Open New Tech Fronts
THE HINDUS BUSINESS LINE — Oct 2 — Shaadi.com has tied up with Dish TV and Vodafone and Bharat Matrimony with Tata Sky and Airtel. While there are only around 40m Internet users in India, the number of mobile services users and DTH subscribers is estimated at 300m and 14m respectively. "Our tie-up with Vodafone took off in August and already the service has been accessed around five million times," says Mr Vibhas Mehta, Business Head, Shaadi.com. Mr Murugavel Janakiraman, founder and CEO, Bharat Matrimony.com, says the tie-up with Tata Sky will give the company direct access to over 2m homes in addition to its existing base of over 12m members. FULL ARTICLE @ THE HINDUS BUSINESS ONLINE
BharatMatrimony.com Live On Airtel
PRESS RELEASE — Sep 29 — BharatMatrimony.com, Indian matrimony portal launch its services on Airtel, India’s leading
mobile telecom service provider. Airtel subscribers can access the matrimony
services with GPRS enabled handsets across the country. FULL ARTICLE @ OPEN PR
Shaadi Partners With Vodafone
REUTERS — Aug 28 — Online matchmaking services in India have announced tie-ups with telecom service providers, enabling subscribers to view profiles of eligible partners on their mobile phones. Shaadi.com partners with Vodafone and Bharatmatrimony.com with Nokia. In a country with nearly 300m cellphone users, but where only 11m people have access to the Internet, taking matchmaking directly to customers' fingertips makes sense. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
Bharat Partners With Satellite TV Service
PRESS RELEASE — July 23 — Tata Sky, a satellite television service in India, and bharatmatrimony.com have launched ActveTM Matrimony on Tata Sky. Tata Sky subscribers can access the profiles on their TV on a 24×7 basis. "ActveTM Matrimony is a perfect platform, which simplifies matrimony search process of people who do not have access either to the internet or our offline initiative "BharatMatrimony Center" in their city", said Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder and CEO of BharatMatrimony.com.
The full article was originally published at Tech Whack, but is no longer available.
BharatMatrimony To Offer Health Check Ups
MONEY CONTROL — May 27 — Metropolis Health Services India, experts in healthcare since 1981, and BharatMatrimony, India's leading matrimony portal, launched a joint initiative to promote premarital health check ups. Members of BharatMatrimony can avail the pre-marital health check up at special prices and also upload the certificate as part of their profile. Such profiles will be highlighted as "Health Profiles". Premarital health check ups help in preventing untoward instances of contracting infectious or sexually transmitted diseases, abandonment due to the same, reducing health risk for future progeny. FULL ARTICLE @ MONEY CONTROL
Mark Brooks: Honesty Online offered a similar check in the U.S.A. but there was very little call for a $200+ in-person identity verification, background check, and health check including an AIDS test. Now Honesty Online offers a ~$10 background check.
BharatMatrimony Raises $11.75m
PRESS RELEASE — Feb 6 — Consim, formerly known as BharatMatrimony, has closed its second round of investment of USD $ 11.75 million led by Mayfield Fund and participation from existing investors, Yahoo! and Canaan Partners. Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder & CEO, Consim Info, said, "We plan to leverage this fund to expand our matrimony business in the international markets and to strengthen our other classifieds offerings. We believe that the global knowledge and experience of our investors will help us scale our business strategically."
The full article was originally published at Tech Whack, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: BharatMatrimony competes head on with Shaadi in India for matrimonials dating.