By Himanshu Dubey, IANS,
New Delhi: Nineteen-year-old Deeksha Batra wants a perfect partner. She has not left the “job” to her parents alone but has turned to matrimonial sites to look for the “perfect” man.
“Small town families are conservative; so they go for arranged marriages. But at times things go horribly wrong. I want to be sure and so I turned to matrimonial sites to find the perfect match,” Batra said.
“Matrimonial sites are a better option any day,” Batra, who lives in Faridabad, adjacent to the national capital, told IANS.
A survey by matrimonial portal BharatMatrimony.com showed that more girls from small towns are turning to these online sites compared to those living in big cities.
There are over 1,000 matrimonial sites in the country.
“We are delighted to see the growth in usage of our site by women in smaller cities. I always believed that our society was ready for the technology that upholds its traditional values,” said Murugavel Janakiraman, the founder and CEO of BharatMatrimony.com.
He cited several reasons for the emerging trend.
“The aspirations of people in smaller cities are quite high. They have started looking out for better options and innovative ways to achieve them.
“Also the education system in India has come a long way. The awareness that is being created among the people is excellent and is instrumental in changing the attitude towards online matrimony in smaller towns and cities,” he told IANS.
BharatMatrimony.com alone is hosting over 15 million profiles from across the globe. And with new users coming in from smaller towns the number is likely to shoot up in the next few years, Janakiraman said.
“The online matrimonial business is very good and we expect it to grow by 15 percent,” he added.
According to the survey, the number of women users from smaller towns registered in matrimonial sites rose by 34.6 percent over the past one year while in the metros the growth rate of women users was 16 percent.
The survey said that northern India has seen a steep rise in the number of women registering online.
“More and more women from smaller towns are turning to matrimonial sites for finding a suitable life partner,” it added.
Twenty-two-year-old Nikita Sharma, a hardware engineer from Aligarh, told IANS: “I registered myself on a matrimonial portal six months back because I am an independent girl and want to lead my life the way I want. I care for my parents but not at the cost of my happiness.”
Women living in metros are, however, not so keen on matrimonial sites.
“I think women who are unable to find anyone around them register themselves on these websites, hoping that at least someone matching their aspirations meets them,” said 20-year-old Chandni Jain, a student in Delhi University.
Allahabad-based Tanushree Sharma said that when a girl in a small town reaches the age of 18, her parents begin to pressurise her for marriage.
“These matrimonial sites are of a great help to find a man of our choice. After all one can never be too careful. It’s also the best way where we can express our views without offending our parents. After all, our life is involved,” said Sharma.