The Betterhalf team
In 2016, Rahul Namdev and Pawan Gupta discussed corporate employees’ challenges in finding their life partners. They concluded that the traditional Indian methods of finding a soulmate (through friends and relatives, etc.) were challenging and imperfect.
The MIT graduate duo felt there should be a way to simplify the matchmaking process.
“While the industry talked about marriage, the last step of the partner search journey, it didn’t discuss the entire search process, which is way more volatile, uncertain, frustrating and anxiety driven,” says Gupta. “We felt we could build a process that brings delight and certainty to users during their partner search. We realised this could be done through lots of data. That was how the idea of Betterhalf was born.”
Also Read: Betterhalf nets US$8.5M Series A from Finsight Ventures, Instagram and Dropbox co-founders, others
Founded in 2019, Betterhalf is a new-age matrimony super app that provides full-stack tech-enabled wedding planning services to urban Indians.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup aims to break the old approach of matchmaking apps in India with its advanced compatibility algorithm powered by Artificial Intelligence. It has integrated online matchmaking services assisted with human matchmaking, background verification, astrology, horoscope matching and wedding planning services that help users across all phases of their marriage.
“Our product is live across all three phases of marriage-matchmaking, courtship and wedding — all under one super app,” shares Gupta, who previously co-founded Spirit Continues, an educational software company.
With the app, Betterhalf targets users in the age group of 24 and 45 years. The startup claims the app has over 500,000 users and a million connections.
Its services are available in 30-40 cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore.
The role of AI
The users get up to seven to ten matches daily. Betterhalf then sorts these recommendations per their predicted preferences and compatibility. While picking the matches, the app also considers other deep layers besides keeping the mutual likes and dislikes in mind (about 60 per cent of its users need matching on religion, language and community, which is in-built into the product).
“Once you go through a profile and like it, you can send or accept connection requests. After connecting, you can start the conversation to see if you have found your soulmate,” Gupta explains.
“Our unique AI algorithm has studied and processed over 500,000 compatibility use cases and weddings worldwide. With this much data and the personality quiz that analyses your 16 demographic and behavioural traits, it is easier to predict your preferences of age, height, salary, language, location and universally-accepted compatible grounds for people based on their social activities. It can match the grounds and land you a compatible partner,” he elaborates.
Rahul Namdev and Pawan Gupta (R)
India’s matrimony and wedding market is a US$130-billion opportunity. The whopping market size can be attributed to the fact that Indians take tying the knot seriously, making matrimony and wedding services a growth-oriented business.
India has many popular matrimonial sites, including the leaders, such as Bharat Matrimony, Jeevansathi, and Shaadi.com.
Also Read: AI has the potential to perpetuate harmful biases, says Inmagine CEO
Betterhalf recently raised US$8.5 million from investors, including FinSight Ventures (which has previously invested in dating app Bumble), Instagram Co-Founder Mike Krieger, and Dropbox Co-Founder Arash Ferdowsi. Rebel Fund, Nurture Ventures, Leonis Investissement, Derek Callow (ex-CMO of Bumble), Scott Belsky (Founder of Behance), Brendan O’Driscoll (ex-Product Head of Spotify), Manik Gupta (ex-CPO of Uber), Punit Soni (ex-CPO of Flipkart), and Ravish Naresh (Co-Founder & CEO of Khatabook) also joined.
The startup plans to utilise the capital to strengthen its vision to become a marriage super app unicorn.
“We are the defacto Operating System for marriages and weddings in India. We work with customers and vendors/suppliers by plugging them into this OS to drive transactions and revenue for various categories like matchmaking, verification, astrology, gifting, venue booking, photographers, decorators, bridal makeup, and mehendi. The lifetime value of a Betterhalf customer grows thousands of dollars with a series of products, and inefficiencies in the market are high to be disrupted through tech,” he concludes.
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