Shaadi Mubarak: How The Wedding Company reshapes wedding planning for India’s middle class

When you think of Indian weddings, it’s always the imagery of something grand and lavish—almost out of a Bollywood movie. One of the largest and most intricate ecosystems, the Indian wedding industry sees nearly 10 million weddings annually.

Many families fend for themselves in this quite fragmented industry. “Weddings in India are still planned the same way they were two decades ago,” Pawan Gupta of The Wedding Company, tells YourStory.

While vendor unreliability, last-minute cancellations, and inconsistent service quality are common issues, Gupta says they aren’t exceptions but symptoms of a broken system.

To most middle-income families, professional services remain inaccessible as planners charge 8–10% of the budget. Limited technology adoption further adds to the chaos. “What this industry needs is structured execution with accountability,” he emphasises.

This group—which represents 20–30% of India’s estimated $130 billion wedding economy—is aspirational, quality-conscious, and cost-sensitive, preferring transparency over excess.

Bengaluru-based The Wedding Company—founded in 2023 by MIT alumni Pawan Gupta (Co-founder and CEO) and Rahul Namdev (Co-founder and CPTO)—was born from a simple yet persistent consumer need.

“We were running a progressive matchmaking platform, betterhalf.ai, between 2017 and 2021, serving nearly 5 to 10 lakh users every month. As couples met through us, they began reaching out for help with their weddings,” Gupta recalls.

It started with informally asking for decorators, makeup artists, or venues. But soon, “the frequency and urgency of the requests made it clear that the market was broken, especially for middle-income families.”

For six months, the team conducted fieldwork, testing vendor tie-ups, managing on-ground logistics, and piloting wedding planning support, which led to a tech-enabled full-stack wedding planning model.

About 90% of The Wedding Company’s business falls in the Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 lakh budget range—a bracket often overlooked by luxury wedding planners. The remaining 10% are from higher-end weddings that go up to Rs 5 crore.

On Tuesday, July 15, The Wedding Company raised Rs 8 crore ($1 million) in a pre-seed round to expand into new cities, strengthen its product and technology, and build a robust vendor network to standardise wedding services at scale.

The funding round was led by LVX (formerly LetsVenture) and Tremis Capital, with participation from notable angels, including Wakefit Co-founder Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, Delhivery COO Ajith Pai, and Dropbox Co-founder Arash Ferdowsi.

A platform designed for efficiency and assurance

The Wedding Company enables couples to manage their entire wedding journey online, including venue bookings, décor, bridal styling, photography, and catering.

Its flagship product, the Instant Wedding Proposal Tool, takes in basic details—city, date, guest count, and budget—and within 30 seconds, provides couples with a comprehensive proposal outlining suggested venues, design themes, and an itemised budget.

It also supports a proprietary 11-step digital workflow to help couples and internal teams manage progress throughout the planning and execution lifecycle. Each couple is assigned a dashboard showing live updates on shortlisting, bookings, vendor communication, payment tracking, and delivery timelines.

“What would usually take a week of calls, spreadsheets, and WhatsApp messages is now simplified into a single digital interface. This brings immense clarity to families in the early planning stage,” Gupta says.

The company is not shying away from using artificial intelligence to offer better service. Its AI-powered décor planning tool enables users to upload a reference image from social media, where the system identifies the flower types, materials, structure sizes, props, and lighting, and matches them with internal supplier rates to generate a detailed proposal.

“We’re teaching the model to understand wedding aesthetics—how to distinguish silk drapes from satin, or real orchids from artificial ones. We want users to know exactly what they’re paying for. This transparency can drastically reduce price shocks,” Gupta explains.

The startup has trained its model on 800 standardised designs and will release it within the next few months.

Vendor network and operational execution

Unlike typical listing marketplaces, The Wedding Company offers fulfilment services by working with a curated network of over 2,000 suppliers, including venue partners, decorators, photographers, and caterers.

It supports operations Bengaluru, Gurugram, Delhi, Noida, Jim Corbett, Jaipur, Udaipur, and Goa, and more recently, Thailand.

Gupta says, “Most families are wary of unknown vendors. Our vendors are contractually onboarded and evaluated for quality. If there are service lapses, we impose penalties. That accountability is what differentiates us.”

The structure benefits vendors, too. By receiving predictable bookings and streamlined payments, some vendors earn anywhere between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 2 crore annually through The Wedding Company.

To date, it has helped with over 400 weddings, delivering a total service value of more than Rs 120 crore. Of this, it has fulfilled Rs 60 crore ($7.2 million) worth of services.

Revenue and business model

The startup follows a dual revenue model, where it charges customers planning and assurance fees—typically around 4% of the total wedding budget—and collects platform fee from suppliers based on volume and long-term contracts.

For instance, a wedding with a budget of Rs 30 lakh would typically result in a planning fee of Rs 1–1.2 lakh—nearly 50% lower than traditional, premium wedding planners.

For last FY, The Wedding Company recorded a Gross Order Value (GOV) of Rs 41.68 crore. Its current service order booking volume exceeds Rs 10 crore worth of services per month, with realised net monthly revenue of around Rs 1 crore.

It aims for a 3X growth in FY26 and is targeting a GOV of Rs 120 crore.

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With competition from WedMeGood, Ferns and Petals, ShaadiSaga, and local boutique planners, Gupta says The Wedding Company ensures the wedding “actually happens the way it’s promised.”

“Our biggest competitor isn’t another app, it’s the chaos families deal with. We built The Wedding Company to remove the ambiguity, stress, and informal planning gaps, especially for middle-income Indians who want reliability without overpaying,” he adds.

The way ahead

According to Grand View Research, the Indian wedding services market, valued at $103.93 billion in 2024, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.3% from 2025 to 2030. The destination wedding market, according to a Future Market Insights report, is predicted to reach $36.8 billion by 2025 and $68.2 billion by 2035 at a CAGR of 6.4%.

Gupta emphasises that the company became operationally profitable in October 2024 with Rs 6 crore in domestic capital. “We’ve seen players raise Rs 100 crore and still struggle with delivery,” he says. “Our focus has always been on execution, not just visibility.”

With a team of over 100 full-time employees across operations, customer experience, technology, and vendor management, The Wedding Company is focused on strengthening its presence in existing cities and improving service delivery before entering new markets. It plans to enter three more Indian cities this year.

The company is also seeing growing interest from the Indian diaspora and NRIs planning weddings in Thailand, Bali, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, which may serve as natural extensions of its operational model.

“We’re trying to bring a method to the madness. Not with glamour or gimmicks, but with reliable systems, trained people, and technology that works,” Gupta says.

(Disclaimer: The copy has been updated to rectify error.)