Murugavel Janakiraman has been in the business of online matrimony for more than two decades. He officially started in the year 2000 with the exclusive matrimony site BharatMatrimony. But three years prior, he would start a community site in the US for the diaspora and launch a page for brides and one for grooms, where he famously found his equal Deepa and also realised the market potential. In a telephonic chat with Stimulus Unplugged on the eve of Deepavali 2020, Janakiraman tells us that his family celebrates the festival a day earlier as per their custom. Having completed the festive rituals at home, he was in office even on the day because he is married to the purpose of ‘Happy Marriages’ that now drives the team of over 3,500 at Matrimony.com.
We asked its Founder and CEO about the impact of Covid19 and dating apps like Tinder on online matrimony, his experiments with multiple verticals, the permanently shifting goal posts and more, in a freewheeling conversation. Edited excerpts:
What has been the impact of Covid19 and lockdown on the business? You reported higher registrations in the early part of the lockdown. Matrimony.com also reported very good Q2 results last week.
Without doubt, Covid has hit many businesses. As an organisation, we believed that the crisis was too good an opportunity to miss. For us, the Covid crisis has been a blessing in disguise. We adopted a two-pronged strategy: to play offensive and defensive.
The defensive strategy was to save wherever possible. In normal times, certain things are not possible to execute for various reasons. Covid has brought in a new way of doing things. We optimised the number of associates by almost 700 to 800 people. It wasn’t like a retrenchment but a gradual shift to new processes and online methods. To give you an example, we had 200 collection executives earlier but today we have only 70, because people have moved to online payments. There is usually a lot of attrition among tele-callers. We didn’t rehire. The focus was more on aspects that would boost productivity.
The offensive strategy was the inverse where it mattered. Look at the Q2 numbers. We cut down almost Rs. 6 to 7 crore of opex (year on year) and invested in marketing – the marketing spend has gone up. After a couple of years we are seeing double digit growth. That is not just on account of increased marketing, many of the things we have been doing for some time have contributed to the double digit growth. It is the culmination of the efforts of the last year or so. We have a strong leadership team; we are leveraging AI, analytics. The results are now coming in and we expect this to continue.
Covid has made us more efficient and lean. It’s like when you lose your extra fat and feel fit and energetic.
Yes, in the early part of the lockdown we saw higher number of sign-ups when people were sitting at home. Now things have gone back to the normal levels.
In the larger context, digital adoption has increased. But we see some conversations leading to marriages even on dating apps like Tinder today. How has the ecosystem changed in recent years?
For online matrimony as a category and the opportunity, there is still a long way to go. The penetration in this category is around 12 to 13 percent. There are 60 million people looking for a life partner at any given point in time, of which maybe 7 to 8 million are registered with online matrimony sites. So there is definitely headroom to grow. Thanks to Covid and the increased digital adoption, we think the category will grow much more strongly.
Coming to online dating sites, we don’t see them as a challenge because dating is not just nascent, it also has a limited set of audiences. We don’t see it getting wider acceptance given India’s approach to marriages and the culture that exists. Dating sites can remain distant cousins of matrimony sites, for a different set of users and for a different purpose.
People use dating sites for different reasons. Some people use them for friendship, some for casual relationships, some for long-term relationships and some use it for matrimony. When it comes to matrimony sites, the need is very clear.
That’s one of the reasons the number of female users on dating sites is only 10 percentage of the total. The majority of users are also under 25 years of age. On the contrary, most of our users are 24 years and above.
Your father-in-law found you online many years ago. How has the profile of users evolved on Matrimony.com sites in the last 23 years? Has the number of women listing their own profiles increased?
Today, overall number of females registered is about 30 percent. Around 70 percent of all profiles are created by individuals. Within males, 85 percent of profiles are created by individuals themselves, while 50 percent of female profiles are created by the individuals themselves. The remaining 50 percent would be a mix of parents, siblings and others. With female profiles, while sometimes they say that the profile is created by parents, it is the individual who is using it.
If you look at the evolution of the category, when it started online matrimony was seen as a last resort. Today it is the most preferred medium. Matrimony sites have come of age in terms of acceptance and usage. Today it has become the preferred choice for finding a life partner.
You launched Matrimony Meets in 2002 and subsequently Matrimony Centres. How do you see their role with rapid online growth?
The future is obviously online. We have 140 retail outlets where parents and others who prefer the touch and feel can walk in. But predominantly, people sign up online. We have a million signups every quarter and they are done mainly online. Retail outlets in good localities and certain strategic points give visibility and if people want to sign up for a paid listing, they can.
Alongside the growth of the category, the brand has also evolved. Can you walk us through that journey?
If you look at one of our commercials from 15 years ago, we were educating people that you can find a life partner online. It was primarily targeted at parents and the attempt was to try and get them to use online matrimony sites. Over a point in time, we realised that we are a category that needed to target individuals (whose profiles were listed).
We did a lot of research and put in efforts to arrive at the direction that we need to help people find the right life partners leading to a happy marriage. If we can facilitate happy marriages, we can get the country right. The stated purpose of Matrimony.com is this:
The future of a Country depends on its citizens.
Good citizens emerge from good parenting.
Good parenting happens in a happy marriage.
And, we are the gateway to happy marriages.
Then we started focusing on what is it that will help people get into a happy marriage. The insight initially was that you should get married to a person, who really cares for what you love. We did a series of commercials on that theme and it was well appreciated. From there it evolved to equality – the campaign featuring MS Dhoni. We realised that women want equality in relationships.
As an entrepreneur, how closely involved are you with the brand’s creative process?
I get involved in all the commercials. I am pretty much involved in everything end-to-end, from the scripts to all the discussions.
You have a host of sites grouped by language, community and the like. What would be the largest among them?
Hindi would have the largest number of profiles. Tamil, Telugu and Kerala are all quite large. We started with Tamil and Telugu but over a period of time we expanded to multiple languages. Today we get a large number of profiles from North India.
Early on, you ventured into multiple verticals like jobs, property and automobiles. What was the thinking then and how did the narrowing down happen, to focus on matrimony?
An entrepreneur is someone who evolves over a period of time. The situation at the time was different and I had to close some of the ventures.
The thought process at that point in time was that having become the leaders in the matrimony vertical, we wanted to replicate the success in other verticals. Also, matrimony is a category where you cannot have a lifelong user, but our users are also using other verticals like jobs and property. We wanted to leverage the strong audience that we had built.
The Indian internet ecosystem today is very different from what it was when we started two decades ago. I remember at one point if any internet company in India achieved a billion dollar market capital that was considered a great achievement. Forget market cap, today companies are raising billion dollars. At the time it was not the case. We raised only 20 million dollars.
As you know, in 2008-’09 there was a global recession. We were left with a million or so and were losing Rs.1 to 2 crore a month. Our board said that the market outlook was challenging and no one knew how long that would last. They suggested that we cut down losses and focus on one or two businesses. We decided to focus on matrimony and property. I had to let go of other businesses.
If the ecosystem is what it is today, we would have raised money and we would have probably succeeded, because we were early movers in many of the verticals. We had IndiaList.com, the equivalent of an Olx or Quikr, much earlier. We were the second player in auto with IndiaAutomobile.com. Having created so many verticals, it was not a happy feeling to shut them down. But I had no choice at that time.
However, since we were focused on matrimony, that led to the launch of so many new ideas in the matchmaking space and led to strong leadership. We launched 300-plus sites, with Community Matrimony, Elite Matrimony and so on. We were able to execute these ideas because of the focus on the core business of matrimony and one more business of property (IndiaProperty.com, which has now been sold).
Within matrimony, we are focusing on matchmaking and wedding services. And within matchmaking, we are now focusing on global opportunities. We are the number one player in SriLanka today with SriLankaMatrimony.com. We have BangladeshiMatrimony, NepaliMatrimony; we have now also launched MuslimMatrimony.com. We are looking at more opportunities in the matchmaking space, in places like South East Asia. Our focus is matchmaking in India and wherever else it makes sense.
In wedding services, we have marketplaces like MatrimonyBazaar.com and Mandap.com, focused on locations across India. We help people discover service providers and charge vendors for premium listings. We have 10,000 wedding venues listed on Mandap.com and are moving towards a target of 30,000 wedding venues.
You are closely involved with TiE and have headed the IAMAI in the past. What do you see as the impact of the last six months on the entrepreneur ecosystem?
I would say entrepreneurs have demonstrated resilience. Even during the Covid period, one thing that did not stop was the flow of funding. Some sectors like hospitality were certainly impacted. But in many that leveraged digital, I was surprised to see that the fund flow for startups was very good during Covid.
India is definitely moving up strongly in the startup ecosystem. The way it is progressing, I think in 10 years India will have more startups than anywhere in the world.
Ten or 12 years ago, our startups were just service providers to global clients. Things evolved and newer companies came in and started providing services for Indian users. Today Indian companies are providing services for global customers. There are a lot of successful SaaS companies; Chennai is known as the SaaS capital with companies like Freshworks and Zoho and many others.
On a parallel, what we saw was Indian CEOs were breaching the glass ceiling to head global companies, be it Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella. Today you look at any PE or VC, you will find Indians. Multiple things happened at the same time leading to the current growth and things are only going to accelerate further.
What is it that keeps Murugavel Janakiraman busy beyond work?
For me, work is life. Then there is family. I do my regular yoga and meditation. My life has time for all these important priorities – health, family, business and spirituality…. and friends. For me, Matrimony.com, beyond work, has a purpose. You want to make every marriage happy and successful.
When we met in person a few years ago, you said you stopped watching cricket long ago. Has that changed with Matrimony advertising on the IPL, and that too with a campaign featuring MS Dhoni?
I am not against people watching – that’s an individual’s choice. I feel that the time can be spent on personal or organisational growth. I like my entertainment, but definitely not four hours everyday watching IPL!
People are watching IPL so we are advertising on it. I even tell my employees that your success alone is your success and you have to invest time for it. Dhoni’s or Kohli’s success cannot be your success. Celebrating their success is fine, you can draw inspiration from it. But invest in your own success.
You’ve launched a successful IPO, the company is growing. You’re close to 50 years old now. What’s the next milestone?
Every time you keep shifting the goal post and keep moving towards the new goals. And in the process, make a difference – to consumers, to employees. I am enjoying the journey.
I am a big follower of Mahatria Ra. He says, ‘Success in big things in life, happiness in small things.’ People tend to look for happiness in big things. There are so many small things in life to draw happiness from, while you work for success in the big things.