Minting Marriages

If the bubble of dotcom had not gone bust way back in the late 90’s, Murugavel Janakiraman probably would have been just another cog in the constantly spinning gears of the IT world.

- Nikhil Raghavan

“Even when that happened and my career as a consultant in the IT sphere was at stake, I could have stuck out with myriad job opportunities and waited for the bust to play out,” reflects Muruga, as he would like to be called. He recalls, “In one of the corporate internal portals that I was managing, I found that the section most frequented was the one on alliances, marriage proposals, seeking life partners, etc. Something buzzed in my head that here was an opportunity that was worth exploring and at that point in my life, I didn’t have anything to lose.”

Humble beginnings

Muruga returned to India and formed his own portal called Matrimony.com. The rest, as they say, is history. “In 1999, when I made my first presentation, the proposal was rejected by all the top Silicon Valley investors. An online matrimony portal was considered a non-viable project at that point. In the year 2000, when Bharat Matrimony was scaling up, online mode of payment was fairly new, and most customers were sceptical about paying online, I pioneered Cash on Delivery (COD),” says Muruga.

And, what was the initial investment when he launched Matrimony.com? Muruga informed, “We bootstrapped the company and our first funding came only in 2006 after many rejections. About $10 per month was the investment in the initial year and that rose to around $1000 per month after the second year.”

Funding comes in