Match Point

Murugavel Janakiraman’s Matrimony.com, launched with an initial focus on the Tamil community, is now a market leader in online matchmaking

- Anshul Dhamija

In 1993, when Murugavel Janakiraman secured a job as a software engineer with Polaris Consulting & Services Limited in Chennai, he was able to fulfil a childhood dream: To rent a house that had electricity and a toilet. A master’s degree holder in computer applications from the University of Madras (his father was a labourer at Port Trust; his education was sponsored by his uncle), Murugavel had grown up in a one-bedroom home in a chawl in Chennai’s Royapuram neighbourhood with his parents and an elder brother, and without some of the basic amenities. “For 20 years, we lived in a 300 sq ft house,” he says.

Cut to 2017 and Murugavel is now the founder and managing director of Matrimony.com Ltd, a consumer internet company that operates from a 10th floor office at the TVH Beliciaa Towers in MRC Nagar, with a sweeping view of the Marina Beach. Two more offices of the company are spread across the city, including a call centre that houses over 800 employees. He lives in an upscale housing project in Chennai (which he bought in 2004 for ₹60 lakh) and plans to “move to a bigger house in the next few years”.

What put the 47-year-old on the highway to ascendancy is Matrimony.com, a meticulously built ₹300-crore revenue company (the bulk of which is earned from its online matchmaking business), with a market cap of ₹1,970 crore. The company’s flagship matchmaking property, through which people can look up and search for prospective partners for a fee, BharatMatrimony, has 15 language-based domains; there are other properties like EliteMatrimony, AssistedMatrimony and CommunityMatrimony, offering specialised services.