INDIAN NUPTIALS can be flashy affairs. The groom often rides a horse or Royal Enfield motorcycle to the venue. Portable DJ sets, powered by car batteries, boom Bollywood hits. Traffic on busy streets is routinely closed to accommodate wedding parades. Marriage in India is big business too. The consulting firm KPMG estimates the revenue of the wedding industry at around 50 billion US dollars. Before the pandemic, these grew by 25% per year.
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Like elsewhere, Covid-19 has forced many Indian couples to postpone the knot. It may also have changed the way they deal with it. Because large weddings are put on hold due to their super-spreader potential, many informal caterers, coconut water sellers, ice cream parlors, wedding card printers, and flower sellers have difficulty postponing weddings. Online services, on the other hand, are flourishing. Matrimony.com, one of the largest companies, has seen revenue increase at least 20% year over year for each of the past four quarters. Shaadi.com, one of the oldest of its kind in India, is seeing a surge in subscribers. And wedding platforms that help families organize and even host weddings online are popping up.
Digitization even extends to advertising. Prospective brides and grooms can no longer introduce themselves in person, sometimes appear on stage and sit at their desks for interviews with the parents of their choice, in speed-dating style. But in India, where arranged marriages are still the norm, parents and matchmakers still need to be involved. And now zoom too.
Murugavel Janakiraman, head of Matrimony.com, expects his new video calling feature for job interviews to last – not least because it is the common capercaillie among customers that the profile picture of their choice beautifies reality. During last year’s statewide lockdowns, video calls also allowed couples to continue their courtship virtually. Another major matchmaker, Jeevansathi.com, saw the number of video meetings increase more than 11 times. The call duration increased by a factor of ten.
Pre-wedding functions are also increasingly online. Couples seek the blessings of elders by touching the laptop screen instead of their feet, says Kanika Subbiah, founder of WeddingWishList.com, a wedding platform. WedMeGood, an app, houses providers such as makeup artists, photographers, caterers, and priests (along with their vaccination status).
Some cautious families have arranged visits from health care workers to guests’ homes to have them tested before attending a wedding in person. Alternatively, you can celebrate from afar. WeddingWishList has hosted more than 100 weddings in its virtual rooms. And the business opportunity doesn’t end when the last night owl runs out of breath. Ms. Subbiah has expanded her services to online baby showers. â–
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This article appeared in the business section of the print edition under the heading “Updating the Vows”