by Sudhir Ahluwalia | Negosentro.com |
[A case study of a unique Indian business]
As equality between genders is slowly moving from aspiration to reality girls and men world over are investing all they got into competing and building a career. In this quest for a better and more financial productive life, love as an emotion is somehow getting relegated down the priority list. This is the brave new world of corporations, their citizens, business and competition.
But corporate citizens are humans too. They fall in love and seek a partner. Arundhati Balachandran who did her Masters in Analytics from a top notch US school had spent some time working first with a Big Five consulting firm was quick to spot a business need here. She began observing the life styles of her colleagues at close quarters.
She could see that her colleagues and friends were constantly traveling. Each person was putting in ten to fourteen hours of work a day. On weekends, there was the laundry and the house cleaning to do. This left them with little time or energy to do anything else.
Marriage was an aspiration for which one has to invest time. But time was at a premium. She observed that the decision to date or find a suitable partner was constantly getting relegated to a future date. The deal at hand had to be secured. The project deadline had to be met first.
‘Marriage is serious business. The need for a suitable partner is there.’ This was a conversation she heard over coffee and during lunch. The idea of assisted match making started germinating.
Wanting to start out on her own Arundathi took a little while before deciding to start Urban Tryst. The first task she set for herself is to clearly define the business need. She was returning back to India after a while. She decided to invest time to observe the market in India.
She observed that the corporate Indian was reluctant to go the traditional Indian way. The marriage market is vibrant. But the young corporate Indian was not willing to take the traditional route, Arundhati observed. They were not willing to invest time and energy into a relationship.
They didn’t want to outsource the task to their parents because that was not the cool thing to do. They belonged to the upwardly mobile club of jet setting Indians. Most of them were in the business of outsourcing tech services. They were looking to outsource partner hunting too to a suitable, credible and reliable institution.
Urban tryst is a paid service. They started operating in May 2014. Their first call came within half hour of the site going up. They got a hundred signups soon after. Fifty four percent of their customers are women. Most of their clients are entrepreneurs with international exposure. Their clients are spread across UAE, UK, US, Singapore, Malaysia in addition to India.
Urban Tryst is taking technology one step forward. Will a version 2.0 be brought forward by Arundhati for clients in the US and rest of the world? Are we entering into the world of made to order matches?
[Image via www.telegraphindia.co]
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About Sudhir
Sudhir Ahluwalia is a business consultant. He has been management consulting head of Asia’s largest IT outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services, business advisor to multiple companies, columnist and author of upcoming book on herbs-Holy Herbs. He has been a member of the Indian Forest Service. His webpage is: www.sudhirahluwalia.com
