The affect of govt. advisory on matrimonial sites and how it validates our idea

If you’ve followed the news closely, the Govt. of India is laying down advisory for matrimonial sites (http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/government-lays-down-advisory-for-matrimonial-websites-116060200813_1.html). The advisory (though not clearly available right now) will have these major pointers:

1. Users need to mandatorily submit ID, address proof to create a profile on matrimonial sites
2. Matrimonial sites should store user IP address for min. 1 year.
3. Matrimonial sites should declare that the purpose of such sites is purely for matrimony and should not have any obscene material
4. Matrimonial sites should have a proper grievance redressal.

This is a welcome move as traditional matrimonial sites have become a common place for fake profiles, frauds, flirts, scammers, etc.

With this advisory, it is clear that traditional matrimonial sites will see a steep fall in userbase and revenue. How? Read on..

Fall in userbase

Being in the matchmaking space for over 6 years now, I can tell you how user onboarding works. And with the new advisory, you might see 70 – 80% drop in userbase of traditional matrimonial sites. Below chart shows you two user onboarding scenarios — 1. Without verification 2. With verification. You’ll see that while 100 users sign-up in both scenarios, without verification, 80 users usually get in after the usual drop in sign-up on each step. And with a barrier for verifications in scenario 2, this number will steeply fall to just 20 people who might be willing to upload an ID or any other proof.

Fall in revenue

Scenario 1 — From the above, it is visible that 80 people will be able to get in and these 80 users become potential customers for these matrimonial sites. Applying an avergae conversion from free-to-premium at 10% and avg. cost of premium package being Rs. 2000/-, a matrimonial site would have made Rs. 16,000/-

Scenario 1: 80 users x 10% = 8 users x Rs. 2000 each = Rs. 16,000

Scenario 2 — Under this scenario, only 20 people get in as they are the only ones who are genuinely interested to find a match by submitting an ID proof. Considering the users in this scenario are more likely to purchase a premium subscription, we’ll take the free-to-premium conversion as 20% —

Scenario 2: 20 users x 20% = 4 users x Rs. 2000 each = Rs. 8,000

This shows that traditional matrimonial sites will take a big hit in terms of revenue generation after a blow to decline in their userbase.

How this validates our idea and benefits us:
We launched Truejodi.com, a 9 step verified only matchmaking app in early 2016, with the same reason why the govt. has come up with this advisory. We saw family, friends and many people who have been suffering due to fakes, flirts on matrimonial sites. We are glad that today our idea stands validated.

With verifications as our core USP, we’ve built a reliable and robust system to verify and authenticate users before they can board our app to find a match.We have elaborate verifications where we ask users for ID proof, address proof, Education, Income proof and are introducing medical test as well thus taking the concept of verified profiles a step further which is the need of the hour in matrimony. It would be interesting to note that only about 20 – 25% users actually make it to the main app to find their match. The below chart shows comparitve verifications of different matchmaking sites / apps at signup stage.

Truejodi launched in early 2016 and has seen an exponential growth ever since. We have around 10,000+ users registered as of May, 2016, 63% being female. We also expect to reach the 1000,000 user mark by year end.

A human’s average lifespan is 70 years of which 40% is spent building a career while the remaining is spent with that beautiful person who matters the most. So why take a risk and hook up with the wrong person unless you want to crib your entire life!

This post was originally published by Ravi Mittal here.

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