Not everyone may have heard the song 'Matchmaker, Matchmaker...' from the old-time hit musical movie Fiddler on the roof, but software quality engineer Nikhil Supekar decided to find his life partner by himself and not depend on an agent or relatives. So, Supekar, who works in an IT company in Pune, installed the Matrimony.com app in October 2019 to look for a bride. He found her the very next month – Ankita, who lived with her parents in Kopargaon, which is a town in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, about 200 km from where he lived. “We got engaged in December and got married in February 2020,” he says. “The application process is simple, with proper community-wise filters,” adds Supekar. He used the Marathi portal, and they followed the traditional ways too: they first told their parents; then their families met to decide on the marriage. In Bengaluru, Trisha and Neeraj Shah too chose Matrimony.com – for a variety of reasons. “I am not the first one in my family,” says Trisha. “Earlier, too, a close relative had got a good match from the site. This marriage gave us more confidence.” Matrimony.com, she points out, also sorts out and lists traditional matches via a search based on one’s preferences. This saves everybody’s time. “We met in Bengaluru,” she adds. “Fortunately, there is a ‘preferred location’ option. Neeraj and I were both looking for a partner based in ‘preferred location’.” Now that they are happily married, they are looking for a match for her younger sister on the same site. The Supekars and Shahs are only two of the hundreds of thousands of happy couples who met through Matrimony.com and its many different services that are targeted specifically at members of different religious and community groups. Murugavel Janakiraman, founder-CEO, Matrimony.com, is his own ‘most satisfied customer’, he says: he met his wife through the site. “It was definitely a great feeling to meet Deepa through my own service,” he grins. “I had never imagined getting married to someone from as far away as Gujarat. What’s also unique about this relationship is that both our parents’ names are the same!” Janakiraman, who was born and brought up in Chennai, always wanted to do something on his own and ‘drifted’ into what he does. He began by providing services to the Tamil community in 1997, when he was working in the US. Online matrimony, which was one of the sections he offered on his site, evolved into a business, TamilMatrimony, when he saw good traction and seized the opportunity. Today, he says, “My life revolves around it – it’s my purpose, my identity and business too.” Specialised services He has since built up his first venture into a Rs390 crore global giant, with five million active members served by an on-the-ground network of 130-plus retail centres in India and a team of more than 3,000 people – creating a culture of intrapreneurship, passion and ethics – guided by professionals at the top, to deliver match-making, marriage and other services to Indians and the Indian diaspora through its websites, mobile sites and mobile apps.
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Janakiraman is his own ‘most satisfied customer’
