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Cyber marriages
 Marriages are made in heaven is an old saying. The new saying is marriages are made over the Internet. Time has changed all the traditions. People look for their lifemates online, hearts join together and the saying marriages are fixed over the Internet becomes true.
Even some five to six years ago, we would have seen pages of matrimonial advertisements in 'The Hindu'. Now the trend has changed.
A website named 'Bharatmatrimony.com' was started by a young entrepreneur,
Murugavel, in 1997. According to Murugavel, "The prime objective of Bharatmatrimony.com is to bring like-minded, prospective individuals together. Our sole purpose is to use a secure online environment and technology to provide our members with fast, relevant and best matching results. Bharatmatrimony fulfils the needs of today's single men and women who are searching for convenient and effective ways to meet other quality singles."
Speaking about the launch of the website, he said
Bharatmatrimony.com very soon attracted a community of over 40,000 singles and quickly became a leading online matchmaking site. By early 2001, nearly 2 lakh members were meeting at Bharatmatrimony.com, and engagement and marriage announcements started to pour in. "Currently, there are over millions of profiles and lakhs of successfully married couples through our website."
"At first I started a website for Tamil
'sysindia.com' in 1996 with a motive to do something for Tamil. In that I used to update columns on Tamil daily. For the first six months, I was doing this as a part-time work. During 1997, I converted the website into a matrimonial website," Murugavel added.
Murugavel is an MCA graduate and worked with Polaris for more than a year. After this he worked in USA for sometime and he returned to India. Then he started the matrimonial website, which has today developed into a leading website in services it offers.
Bharatmatrimony takes the pride of being the first website in India for matrimonial services. This young entrepreneur also started matrimonial websites in 14 Indian languages.
Today, Bharatmatrimony has 14 languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalee, Marathi, Marwadi, Oriya, Parsi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil and Telugu, in its fold. This tells the success story of
Murugavel.
Bharatmatrimony also organised an
swayamvaram for the physically challenged on November 2, 2003. "The marriage meet offered the physically challenged an unexplored opportunity to meet their prospective life partners. Since the people looking for the match were those with special needs, the search was for a partner who would understand those needs and be a completing factor in their lives. Around 200 physically challenged people registered for the 'swayamvaram' and as the day progressed, quite a lot of them exchanged phone numbers and horoscopes," Murugavel pointed out.
When asked what Bharatmatrimony has been doing for people who do not have computers or who do not know how to operate computers, Murugavel said, "In 2002, we conducted a mega swayamvaram at Raja Muthiah hall, Chennai. More than 3,000 singles participated in the swayamvaram. We provided an alternative way for singles to get married
through us."
"We celebrate our anniversary with an eminent personality every year. During our anniversary, we select two couples who married through our website and give them an oppurtunity to stay in a 5-star
hotel. The couples get the privilege of choosing the hotel," the entrepreneur states.
Not only this, as an extension to
Bharatmatrimony's online service, they also have a Tamil magazine, 'Vazhkkai Thunai', (Life Partner), which comprises classifieds and marriage-related articles. Their latest venture was the launch of the first fortnightly matrimonial magazine for South Asians living in USA - 'Desi Match Maker'.
Bharatmatrimony's goal is to help singles find their perfect life partner effortlessly, says Murugavel.
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