Profiting from matchmaking

Murugavel Janakiraman, 37 Education: B.Sc (Statistics), MCA Previous work experience: Lusin Technologies, US Last salary: $100,000 per annum Time spent as an employee: 8 years Age at starting business: 27 years No. of years as entrepreneur: 10 years Initial investment: Rs 400 Source of funding: Personal savings Company’s name: Consim Info Pvt. Ltd. Turnover: Rs 100 crore No. of employees: 1,051

A simple dream: Murugavel Janakiraman doesn’t quite remind you of Cupid. But for the past 10 years, the founder and CEO of the Rs 100 crore Bharatmatrimony.com has played the role with diligence. It wasn’t what he aspired to as the son of a labourer who worked at the Madras Port Trust, Chennai. His dreams were simple: sound education and a decent job. Janakiraman managed the first when he graduated in statistics from a reputed college in Chennai in 1990. On a friend’s advice, he then enrolled for MCA at the University of Madras. Three years later, he was ready to fulfil his second dream.

Janakiraman’s networking skills and a dash of luck landed him a job as a computer programmer with Polaris Software Pvt. Ltd. on a monthly salary of Rs 5,000. “In university I participated in various competitions, which brought me in contact with industrial bigwigs, whom I befriended. So I didn’t have to struggle too much for a job,” he says. A year later, his luck peaked again when he was offered a Singapore posting by Hewlett Packard at Rs 50,000 (SGD 2,500) a month. “The offer was too good to resist,” says the man, who worked with the company for a mere six months before cornering another plum posting with an Internet service provider, Telif Corporation (now defunct), at Rs 1 lakh per month. However, he soon quit the sinking ISP and moved to the US in 1996. “I worked with AT&T for a year-and-a-half and then joined Lusin Technologies, where I took care of multiple projects,” he says.

Net working: It was also the year the Internet economy was spiralling to new heights. Raring to tap its surging potential, Janakiraman bundled it with his growing ambition to provide online services to the US-based NRIs. “Like others I was very fascinated by the Internet and wanted to launch my own Website,” he says. So even as he continued to work with Lusin, he began to conceptualise and design the site and develop content from home. Little wonder that it took a measly investment of Rs 400 to get the site going.

The result was sysindia.com, a portal offering information on property, jobs and matrimony, besides putting up recipes and chatting facility. “Initially, it was only for the Tamil and Telugu communities in the US, but eventually I opened it to all Indian communities,” he says. While all sections were popular, the one on matrimonial services garnered the most hits. “To begin with, it was a twopage section, but as the profiles increased I introduced more pages,” he says. His confidence grew when he got letters from people thanking him because they had got married through his site. Buoyed by the site’s success, he flew to Chennai in 1999 to set up office in a rented 300-sq-ft room and employed two people. However, his work with Lusin continued. “I couldn’t have done it in the US because of prohibitive costs,” he says. In the same year, he made the free site a paid service, charging Rs 300 for the time that it took a person to find a match. Expectedly, the site became popular, and by 2000, he had increased the staff to 20.

Launch & growth: The turning point came in 2001 when the dotcom bubble burst. Like many others, Janakiraman was also laid off from Lusin, and he decided to shift base to India to give wings to his matrimonial venture. As a first step, he created a new site and called it Bharatmatrimony.com. The USP? It had community-based micro matrimonial sites, the first such Website in India to do so. “People here prefer to get married in their own communities, so it seemed like a workable idea. Besides, the Website made the search for a bride/groom much quicker compared with the offline options,” he says.

Though money wasn’t much of a problem in the earlier stages thanks to his savings, the scepticism about privacy violation proved a hurdle. “People didn’t want to share their photos or profiles with every visitor. So we came up with a feature that would allow them to hide the photos,” says Janakiraman. The move worked and within a few days the number of hits shot up.

To tackle the other big challenge, publicising the site, Janakiraman decided to exploit the same medium, the Internet. He tied up with sites like Sify, Rediff and MSN to advertise his own Website. “Though we paid around Rs 1 lakh to each site for advertising Bharatmatrimony, the investment paid off,” he says.

As he continued to plough back the profits into the business, he set up another office in Mumbai in 2002. Soon the rates were also revised: Rs 300 was made valid for a year and eventually for six months. “Today, we charge Rs 1,790 for a three-month subscription,” he says. Then he focused on making matchmaking a real-time experience by introducing features like online verification system, chat service and horoscope matching, which helped popularise the site further. The big moment came in 2006 when Yahoo and Canaan Partners jointly invested $8.65 million in the company. “It was the first time Yahoo had invested in an Indian firm and it bolstered my confidence,” he says. He used the money to expand to property and jobs segments. The next year, he changed his company’s name to Consim Info Pvt. Ltd. Recently, Yahoo and two other US-based firms have invested $11.75 million in the firm.

The future: Today, on an average, the site registers 15,000 profiles daily and the firm has 40 offices and 100 centres across India. But Janakiraman refuses to rest on his laurels. He is targeting a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore in the next five years and plans to take the venture to other countries. “We will start with countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, which are culturally similar to India,” he says. A public issue is also on the anvil. “We plan to raise Rs 150 crore, but the issue is tentatively scheduled for 2010,” he says.