Even though the Internet penetration in India stands at a dismal number (3%?), matrimony sites are emerging as one of the leading money making online businesses in India.
As per a market research (called ‘A Web Partner for Life‘), the online matrimonial industry is expected to reach 20.8 million registrations with revenues of $63 million by 2010-2011.
Indians are very concerned with online safety and data confidentiality, especially when submitting personal information. With tremendous amount of data, scaling will not only be in terms of membership growth, but also the operations support for large membership base. Given that a partner match conceivably may end a user’s subscription to an e-marital site, site stickiness within e-Matrimony is relatively low. – source
Matrimony Market – Current State
The size of online classifieds industry stands at ~$160mn (Online Matrimony Segment = 17%, Online Jobs Segment = 73%, Other segments: property, automobile, etc = 10%).
Would you agree that the only Internet service that works (i.e. monetizable) in India are jobs and marriage ones (purely transactional/solves the pain of aggregation/information), i.e. classified sites and the rest is still ‘somewhere, but just not there’?
Is this representative of market dynamics – i.e. user needs? Would like to understand your opinion.
View abstract of report.
By this statement, online jobs will be over Rs.500 crores -which is grossly incorrect. I think all revenues mentioned in this article are about 40% higher from reality.
Markets where supply side is fragmented find a very strong value proposition in classified business model (print or internet). Companies can build sustainable entry barriers with time and get multiples. For Example: Matrimony and Jobs – 1000s of suppliers and network has a value there. On the other hand; Air Travel – supply side is pretty concentrated and I am still seeing travel sites coming and doing transactions. Nevertheless, category leaders would have value here also but it would take lot of cash to become a leader.
Continuing the same hypothesis – I think property classified should emerge as a viable business model. Not sure about the Auto Sales, but second hand auto sale should be a good business, if market exists.
-Mukul
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