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Online marriage search industry is pegged at Rs 400 crore and is growing at a rate of 30 per cent. With major plans of setting up of 80 franchise stores in the next three years, Tejas Mehta, Founder-Director, PortalYard International Private Ltd is now aiming to launch exclusive stores of its matrimonial site – Chhorachhori. Here’s an excerpt of the conversation with him.

Why did you come up with a matrimonial site? Please tell us about it.

In this rapidly changing world, culture is also changing equally fast. More and more people are now looking for their best suitable life partner not only from their own cast or family reference but also from outside of their cast who match their education, family culture and respect thoughts. But then, it’s not easy to get such a match with limited resources of individual. Hence, we have created a pool of such a variety of profiles from where any individual can find their suitable match and also he or she can be found by other member once he or she gets registered.

With already many established brands in this segment, how do you see the competition in this sector?

Currently, top matrimonial portals have market share of more than 55 per cent, which means there is not much competition in the segment in reality. I would like to mention is, people register more than one matrimonial portal unlike buying some goods. By December 2014, India will be the second largest Internet user market with 27.8 crore of users. That’s a clear growth signal.

What are the challenges in this venture?

Major challenge in this segment is to manage constant funding for business expansion and maintain growth. You need to keep advertising constantly in variety of media even if you are growing, you need to constantly tell the market that you are the best in the business.

What are the opportunities for the franchisees?

There are immense opportunities in real sense simply because we have come up with the extra ordinary model for them. We give our franchisees 75 per cent share from their paid registration. Secondly, we give our franchise owner Rs 10 per free registered profile. Also, our franchisee can appoint CNP (ChhoraChhori Network Partner) under them. When CNP registers any paid membership, franchisee gets 25 per cent out of that. Now, franchisees can appoint as many CNPs under them. It means they can create a network for their constant and stable income. I would like to mention that those CNPs also get Rs 10 per free membership registration as well.

What are your expansion plans? What all cities are you tapping?

We have a target plan of adding 80 franchise centers across India within next three years. We are looking to expand aggressively in all tier I and II cities of India.

How do you see the future of this industry?

This industry is recession proof and growth is going to be exponential in future. We are also coming up with few another new portals along with chhorachhori.com which will be focused on concept of “GharJamai” and “live-In relationship.” Our franchisee will get benefit of those portals as well.