Online matrimony platforms: How wedding seasons, coronavirus pandemic have impacted the matchmaking scene in India

Online matchmaking: The wedding season is here and it seems like the country is trying to make up for the wedding opportunities lost in the last two years due to the coronavirus. Numerous memes are doing rounds on social media around the wedding season this year. But, this season is also the time when people often get inspired to find their life partner as well. To understand how this, along with two years of social distancing lockdown, impacted the online matrimony platforms, Financial Express Online reached out to Betterhalf.ai Co-Founder Pawan Gupta. The app, which aims to target the urban Indian population when it comes to finding partners for marriage, is competing with big names like Shaadi.com and Bharat Matrimony.

Urban India: What it is looking for in matrimony platforms

In recent years, the urban youth has outspokenly denounced the matrimonial ads that seek partners based on traits like looks, height and religion, etc. However, most online matrimony platforms continue to have such criteria itself.

“The ways people are finding love has changed with the advent of the Internet. In general, traditional dating among teens and those in their early twenties have been replaced with more varied and flexible ways of getting together (and technology with social media, no doubt, plays a key role),” the Co-Founder said.

Betterhalf.ai thinks the solution to this is personality test and 16 personality traits, based on which, matchmaking platforms can suggest suitable candidates who could be compatible with each other.

Given the tech-savvy target audience who are more or less familiar with how online dating apps and platforms work, this does seem to be a more preferred way of finding their partners.

Urban matrimony: Women taking the lead?

“Historically, women have refrained from making the first move when it comes to dating – reasons being societal stigma, safety and convention. But it’s 2021 and saying that the world has changed would be an understatement. Women are very practical today, they have become more vocal about their needs, they know what’s good and bad for them. The affirmative nature of women is making them take the lead in dating matters, like they would in any other issue. Women are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of taking control and leading their lives independently they have started to take the charge of finding their partners (the median requests sent by female users to get connected is 5 per female per day compared to almost zero in the matrimony industry), they are more open to exploring options and certainly not restricted by parents for their search,” Pawan Gupta said.

However, aspects like safety are still a concern when it comes to online platforms, and so, many dating and matchmaking apps try to verify their users. “Many safe matrimony apps emphasize creating a pool of verified matches in the virtual world by authenticating the profiles through prominent social media channels – LinkedIn, Facebook, personal email, phone number, work emails, and government ID. They filter out non-serious daters from the platform and make it more secure for women to find a serious and compatible match for themselves,” he added.

Online matchmaking and the pandemic

It is no secret that during the pandemic, the use of online dating apps started skyrocketing, mostly because lockdowns did not allow people to venture out of their homes, and so those who were seeking to find partners, took to the internet. But has a similar trend also been noticed for online matrimony platforms?

“The conventional Indian approach of finding a partner through traditional matchmakers or extended family networks has its shortcomings. The new age millennial is reasonably sure of what they want in a partner, but more importantly, what they don’t want in a relationship. When the raging COVID -19 showed no signs of slowing down, life as we knew it ceased to exist after countries entered strict lockdowns that separated families, started exoduses around the globe, changed how we approached love,” he said.

“There was a boom at the time as people at home were in need to talk to people and socialize. More singles started turning to dating/ matrimonial apps to help meet potential matches.There were a lot of options for users, people were spending more time getting to know one another. This led to more virtual communication before the relationship was taken offline. We observed a rise in video calls and chats, as people are working to figure out what they are comfortable with in real and reel life. We also saw users taking more time reading profiles, asking the right questions, having deeper conversations which led to emotional and mental connections with people on their wavelength. The future of matchmaking in India, we believe, is a reassertion of shared interests and values and also a rejection of compromise,” Gupta added.

Wedding season and the trend on matchmaking apps

Giving some statistics, Pawan Gupta said that last year, his app was witnessing about 50,000 matches a month, but by January and February of 2021 came around, the number of matches skyrocketed to about 2 lakh a month. November and December are typically the months when India sees the peak in weddings and these figures show that post this is usually when others start finding their own life partners. “Then, by the time the next wedding season approaches in November or December, these are the people who get married,” Pawan adds.