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What you will find in this Case Study?
1) About Shaadi.com
2) Idea of Shaadi.com
3) Revenue Model
4) Marketing Strategy
About Shaadi.com
Shaadi.com was started in 1996 as a Matrimonial site when most Indians were even not about what the internet is all about. Anupam Mittal founded the company which today claims to have made more than 3.2 million matches globally.
The objective of the world’s no.1 matchmaking platform, Shaadi.com was to help people find happiness.
Specialized in matchmaking service, Shaadi.com is on the forefront of matrimonial industry and has touched the lives of more than 35 million people.
How Shaadi.com started?
It all started when the internet was in vicinity and in the year of 1996-97, Anupam Mittal living in the US took the initiative to start an online matrimonial site. He was working as product manager in a business intelligence software company Micro Strategy. He felt bored while working there and wanted to return back to India. Not empty handed but with a brilliant idea to implement. So he indulged with 3-4 people and started working with websites over the Internet.
By chance, one day Anupam met a traditional matchmaker. He asked the matchmaker how he works with the concept of marriage going home to home. He enquired about the number of people indulged in the home to home matrimony matchmaking and got the answer as 50-60. It hit the mind of Anupam and he thought that if one chose the traditional way of getting married, they are just limited to the number of matches. So joining one thing with another, he reached to the idea of matrimonial website and thus the idea was conceptualized and in 1997 sagaai.com was launched as an experiment.
Anupam’s main focus was on developing a superior web portal as it was the only source of earning. So he put all his money in the business. Thus after brainstorming and several calculations, Anupam quits his job at Micro Strategy in 2001 and moved back to India. He then changed the name from Sagaai.com to Shaadi.com. He had to pay a huge amount to own the domain Shaadi.com as the person owning the domain was not in a mood of bargaining.
Revenue Model of Shaadi.com
Shaadi.com has a very modest & candid revenue model. They charge the member for a premium membership with various plans. Registration over the platform is free of cost. User can look for various matches according to their requirement. Once they find their preferred match, then to get connected, any one of the two members has to pay.
The portal started as an experiment has transformed the whole matrimonial industry and has touched the lives of 35 million people all across the globe which has recorded about 3.2 million marriages across the globe. Indian matchmaking market size is of around $1 billion and Shaadi.com shares around 40% of it.
Marketing Strategy
The company on a regular basis tries to engage its audience through initiative taken to solve the real life problems faced by people in personal related to Love, Marriage, Dowry deaths etc. Its campaign creates awareness on the issue raised and social media platform receives a lot of customer engagement through the campaign related with social issues like dowry, child marriage, women empowerment etc.
To increase their customer base and user engagement, one more initiative was taken and more than 100 offline Shaadi Centers were opened in over 70 Indian cities.
They regularly host games and contests to engage the customer and generate awareness among the society. Earlier a game “Angry Brides” was launched on its social media pages to generate awareness on the evils of dowry through which the campaign was appreciated by over 600,000 people from more than 35 countries.
Shaadi.com used ‘dowry calculator’ to highlight social evil. They gave a message through the dowry calculator campaign to stop dowry in marriages and showed the number of dowry deaths in India in place of worth value of your dowry.
The company also endorsed Chetan Bhagat to promote the brand name.
Social Media Campaign #FastForHer
Shaadi.com took the first step to start a discussion over gender equality through its social media platforms. Questions were asked to the fans across Facebook and twitter generating polls.
The campaign received huge response from the audience. Head count of more than 18, 72,272 people took the pledge on the website www.fastforher.com. The hashtag #FastForHer kept on trending for the whole time and received over 78 million impressions over Facebook and Twitter. Its YouTube videos got 140,000+ views and with more than 250,000 posts like on Facebook, the campaign showed its success. Moreover 20,000 posts were shared on Facebook. Twitter was also on the way to support the campaign with tremendous results for the hashtag by receiving more than 6500 re-tweets.
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