Despite unemployment and the slowing economy, online businesses are growing. New consumers are coming online and the pie of online grocery, online retail, etc is growing. Similar story is playing out in the matrimony space.
To leverage the increase in digitally-savvy customers, Matrimony.com, which operates the online portal Bharat Matrimony, said that it will strengthen its position in North India and also invest to penetrate deeper into South-East Asian markets.
"While we have around 60 per cent market share in matrimony space in the country and a leadership position in the South, competition is ahead of us in the northern India, said Murugavel Janakiraman, founder CEO of Matrimony.com. More than 50 per cent of the firm's revenue comes from southern states.
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"Our plan is to make sure we are the leaders in the north of India too," he said. They are in the middle of launching new products and marketing initiatives for the North and North-East markets. There will also be increased focus on converting free members to paid members, said Janakiraman.
Outside India, Matrimony.com has a dominant position in Sri Lanka. Next year, it will also set up its office in the island country to further strengthen its position.
"We also are looking at beyond India for long-term growth in the future," said Janakiraman. It already has a website in Bangladesh and Nepal. They also have matrimony website for the global Muslim population called Muslim Match which has its regional variants such as Malaysian Muslim Match, Arab Muslim Match and Indonesian Muslim Match. "These are all in their very early stages and we will finalise plans on their expansion by Q2 FY2020-21," he said.
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Matrimony.com's Q2FY21 result saw healthy growth. Its billing grew 9.7 per cent year-on-year to Rs 96.6 crore during the quarter. Also, its revenue was Rs 92.7 crores, an increase of 4.6 per cent over last year. The company claims to have five million customers in India across its different platforms.
This was led by differentiated products the firm launched in the last six months. "We expect the momentum to continue to grow on the back of deeper internet penetration and new product launches," he said.
They started offering differentiated pricing plans depending on customer's requirements, a free membership service called Prime that offers ID verified profiles, a feature for members to control who can view and contact them with the "Who Can See Me" feature, and the tool to call and message within the matrimony app, without revealing phone number.
During the lockdown, the firm also brought in operational efficiency by using technology and reducing its headcount by 700 people, such as roles of collection executives and tells callers.
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