#1 Tinder (123 posts published on OPW last year)
#2 Bumble (48 posts)
#3 eHarmony (42)
#4 Match Group (41)
#5 Match (37)
#6 OKCupid (37)
#7 Grindr (34)
#8 Happn (22)
#9 The League (21)
#10 Matrimony.com (17)
Other companies that did well and got a solid press coverage last year were Hinge, The Meet Group, Zoosk, Hater, Matchpoool and Chappy.
TIMES OF INDIA – Jan 14 – In the late 90s, Murugavel Janakiraman built a Tamil community website in the US, and to his surprise it was the matchmaking section that really took off. That sowed the idea for an online matchmaking service, Matrimony.com, which he started in 2000 in Chennai. Late last year, the company launched its IPO, but Janakiraman remembers how quite a few VCs felt his company wasn't one to tie the knot with. He was rejected by 10 VCs straight. They did not believe in his idea.
by Aparna Desikan
See full article at Times of India
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
See full article at WorldCrunch
LOVE TV – Dec 20 – Murugavel Janakiraman, the founder and CEO Matrimony.com told Online Personals Watch editor Mark Brooks that parents oftentimes set up profiles for their children and seek out mates on their behalf. In India, a lot has changed over the decades, but arranged marriages remain. Matrimony.com uses behavioral sciences to better match people. While many are looking for marriage and the perfect long term relationship, some have rejected the whole system. One bachelor in India confessed that he's more interested in hook-up apps thank thinking about his future wife.
by Sarah Burris
See full article at Love TV
FORBES INDIA – Nov 30 – Murugavel Janakiraman's Matrimony.com, launched with an initial focus on the Tamil community, is now a market leader in online matchmaking. BharatMatrimony, has 15 language-based domains; there are other properties like EliteMatrimony, AssistedMatrimony and CommunityMatrimony, offering specialised services. According to comScore, matrimony.com is the leader in the online matchmaking service space in India in terms of the average number of website pages viewed by unique visitors. In June 2017, Matrimony.com's online properties clocked 991K unique visitors, while its competitors Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com reported 420K and 348K, respectively. In FY17, the company showed a profit of ₹43.78 crore ($6.6M) on a revenue of ₹292.9 crore ($44M). It also reported a ₹18.8 crore ($2.8) in profit for the quarter ended Sep 30 this year. However, it had a negative net worth of ₹26.79 crore ($4M) for having restated its losses for the financial years 2014, 2015 and 2106, which cumulatively amounted to a loss of ₹87 crore ($13M).
by Anshul Dhamija
See full article at Forbes India
MONEY CONTROL – Nov 27 – Matrimony Pvt Ltd runs the largest matchmaking service in India, which has 65% of its population under 35 years of age. Murugavel Janakiraman, founder & CEO of Matrimony.com, became an entrepreneur accidentally after he got laid off from his job during the 'Y2K' crisis in the year 2000. He moved back permanently to India to concentrate on his venture. Matchmaking was one of the key drivers of Internet in India in its early days which saw competitors such as Shaadi.com. The crucial factor for the company's success, Janakiraman says, was their frugal nature of doing business. "When we started, we invested just $10 per month in marketing," he says. Matrimony has raised Rs 99 crore ($15M) in two rounds over the last 17 years from investors such as Yahoo, Mayfield and Canaan Partners. Only in 2017, in a pre-IPO placement it raised $35M (Rs 225 crore) from investors such as HDFC, Goldman Sachs and Baring Private Equity. Today it has a consortium of ~300 community matrimony websites including ChristianMatrimony, MuslimMatrimony, SikhMatrimony, JainMatrimony and so on. The company's IPO in Sep was oversubscribed by 4.41 times. Matrimony.com claims to enjoy a 60% market share in the segment ahead of major competitors Shaadi.com, JeevanSaathi.com and others.
See full article at Money Control
VCCIRCLE – Nov 17 – Matrimony.com, which owns online match-making firm BharatMatrimony, reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 19.16 crore ($2.9M) for the quarter ended September, up 64% from Rs 11.69 crore a year ago. Consolidated revenue came in at Rs 83.7 crore ($12.9M), 13% higher than Rs 73.61 crore in the same quarter last year, the company said. This is the company's first quarterly result following its IPO two months ago. At Rs 859.30 apiece on the BSE, the Matrimony.com stock is trading below its debut price of Rs 985.
by Manu P. Toms
See full article at VCCircle
by Aparna Desikan
See full article at Times of India
OPW – Oct 10 – India is changing fast! The tradition of arranged marriages is transitioning to ‘planned marriages’ and dating apps. Earlier this year I traveled to India to capture this snapshot in time and history of the progress of the matrimonial and dating apps industry there. I talked with the CEOs of Matrimony, Shaadi and Woo, and interviewed several diverse and fascinating users. This ‘vlogumentary’ covers my journey in Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and let me take you to India.
See all posts on Matrimony.com
See all posts on Shaadi
See all posts on Woo
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks
See full article at Financial Express
See all posts on Matrimony.com
This post also appear on InternetDatingInvestments.