Bharatmatrimony to foray into wedding services

After 17 years of running online matrimony service Bharatmatrimony, its CEO Murugavel Janakiraman says the next leap of growth for the company will be from wedding services.

India is a $54 billion wedding market which includes services such as travel, catering, decorations, invitations excluding jewellery. Indeed, marriages are the biggest household expenditure for any Indian family.

Matrimony.com after capturing different aspects of matching making with brands such as BharatMatrimony, CommunityMatrimony, AssistedMatrimony, and their latest offering for the rich and affluent, EliteMatrimony, is foraying into wedding services.

Currently the focus of the company is on photography and videography through its platform Matrimonyphotography. It is currently operational in three states -- Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerela -- where they are doing 300 weddings per month and aim to scale to 10,000 weddings. 

"The photo vendors are on the rolls of the company but not full time employees. We have booked them on all the weddings days of the year so we can guarantee quality and yet be asset light," says Janakiraman.

Another focus of the company is Matrimonybazaar where customers can avail some or all the wedding services such as catering, decoration, invitation, venue booking, make-up and others. "It is a commission based model where we get a service fee from the customers for every booking," he says.

Janakiraman claims that it doesn't increase the cost of services rather help their customers save up to 10 per cent.

"Due to our scale and size we have been able to strike a deal with different vendors for a competitive price for their services by promising volumes," says Janakiraman. They have 2000 vendors from Chennai on their platform.

Currently, this product is on a pilot mode and will be expanded to other metros after achieving scale. The company claims it is doing more than 200 bookings a month through Matrimonybazaar.