No More Wedding Blues

Getting married? Worried about the venue, the gifts and the

budget? No sweat, just get a wedding planner (And no we are not talking about

Jennifer Lopez here).

Reena Wadhwani’s wedding was only a month away and she was

yet to decide on her trousseau, the booking for the beauty parlor and the

fittings session with her tailor. Wadhwani’s high-flying job left her with no

time to plan the fairytale wedding she had always wanted.

Till she logged on to shaadionline.com. The company offered

her the services of a wedding coordinator, helping manage everything to the

letter. She was able to coordinate schedules with her Bangalore-based fiancé.

"Getting the wedding organized was suddenly a cakewalk–no worries, just

fun," she says.

Wadhwani is not the only one. Moms-in-law-to-be need not fret

over wedding arrangements either, not any more. Shaadionline offers to take over

and transform a family wedding from a tedious task to a fun affair. Though the

concept of wedding coordinators is relatively new in India, it is not unknown.

NRI families are known to have employed wedding coordinators in the past.

So what makes Shaadionline unique? The fact that it has

chosen the Web as the medium of offering its services and making the events

accessible to a very large audience. And where did this all begin? According to

Jai Raj Gupta, CEO of Worldcast Technologies and one of the promoters of the

website, the initial plan was to have a site which would webcast weddings for

those who cared to pay up. But once the idea took root, it expanded itself to

include other services like wedding coordinators, wedding kits, wedding

arrangements and other information-based services.

Services offered include a unique ‘gift registry’

facility as well. Couples about to take the plunge create a wish-list by

visiting vendor showrooms. This list is then uploaded on the site and guests can

choose the gift from there. The benefits are two-way; newly-weds don’t have to

worry about unsuited or duplicate gifts, and guests can have the satisfaction of

gifting the couple exactly what they want. Shaadionline can have gifts delivered

too.

Marketing guru Shunu Sen, CEO of Quadra Advisory, and Kiran

Mazumdar, CMD, Biocon Technologies, are the other entrepreneurs who have put

together their money and wits to promote this start-up. With an initial funding

of Rs 2 crore, the site was launched in May this year, with the groundwork

beginning in early-March of 2000. The site now boasts offices in Delhi,

Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Bangalore, with a total staff strength of 20.

Innovation seems to form the base of the venture. But the

million-dollar question still is in a world of failing dot-coms, will this

venture make money?

Gupta, Sen and Mazumdar believe it will. Says Sen, "The

site has a strong revenue model, not just because of its presence on the Net,

but more so because it has strong support on the ground". Mazumdar adds,

"Dot-coms that only looked at eyeballs and not revenues were a bad idea

from the start. It’s only those who use the Internet as a medium to reach out

to clients and to increase revenues through global reach that will

succeed."

What is interesting is that the company has no visible

competition. While there are a number of sites offering wedding-related

services, most seem to be on-line versions of matrimonial bureaus with concept

ad-based revenue models. For the moment, at least, the bells are ringing well

and loud.

Shilpa Srivastava–Dataquest