Making a dent in the $25.5 billion Indian wedding industry- myShaadi.in
myShaadi.in is one such Delhi based startup founded by Abhishek Jain and backed by some of the biggest names in the Indian startup industry- Rehan Yar Khan, Rajan Anandan and Sunil Kalra. myshaadi.in started as an idea to create a platform that can bring both couples and service providers together and slowly evolved into freemium model transforming into a wedding website at core. Couples can get a website for them, select and send invites, manage RSVPs, and other such functions. They have also extended into an online wedding magazine which has contributions from industry experts that illuminates couples on the latest trends and a bridal look-book showcasing works of some of the best bridal wear designers. “We are marrying technology and weddings, where rule based algorithms can be used to bring method to madness and with technology on our side, we can scale this to any number of weddings.” Abhishek admits that the product could find difficulty in adoption with not so tech savvy couples and therefore they place a lot of emphasis on user experience.
The service according to Abhishek has been used by 35,000+ couples and the Myshaadi.in team plans to ramp this up with marketing. However Abhishek is wary of revealing the exact number of users on the site today. One would believe that the critical mass hasn’t come online yet to take advantage of such a service but the things can only change for the good. “We have users from more than 700 cities and towns in India and even from countries including Ireland, Finland etc,” says Abhishek. According to Abhishek, they have reached the market adoption phase, where wedding websites are slowly and gradually becoming the obvious way of inviting friends and family. There are other players like weddings9 and 7vachan who're trying to capitalize as well.
With a vision to become a place where every couple would come for some of their requirement while planning a marriage, Myshaadi.in intends to extend its offering to provide services of photographers, bloggers, etc. in the future. New investments are being typically used to expand, open up new doors in terms of connections within the industry and hiring.
Website: myShaadi