Shark Tank India judge and matchmaking platform Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal recently revealed that he paid a massive sum when he bought the Shaadi.com domain. The businessman said that this was in the late 1990s, when his company had $30,000 in the account and out of that, they decided to spend $25,000 on the domain as they believed it would fetch them results in the long run. He also revealed that they had Sagai.com before Shaadi.com.
In an interview with Finance with Sharan, Mittal said, “We had a company, where we provided IT solutions to other companies. So there we started Sagaai.com, which was the precursor to Shaadi.com. We had saved about $30,000 in our company. We were getting Shaadi,com domain for about $25,000. $25,000 or $30,000 seemed exorbitant but I believed that without a domain that can become ubiquitous, that can become known for the category, it’ll be tough and this will make our lives easier. So we used all our money.”
He was also asked about investment in dating apps and if he missed the boat on creating dating app. The Shark Tank judge said that there’s no money to be made in the dating app industry in India. He added that platforms like Tinder and Bumble, along with others, are not making much progress.
“Their revenues are not that big and the problem is in India it’s very lopsided. Women always have too much to choose from so therefore you’ll see very few guys get all the demand and all the other guys who come on these sites don’t know what to say. They say the most obnoxious things and the women run away. So think there’s no there’s not real money to be made,” he said.
In fact, Anupam insisted that contrary to people’s perception that the younger generation isn’t using matchmaking sites, or is more inclined towards dating apps, Shaadi.com’s audience is mostly millennial. “This whole thing about millennials not using matchmaking sites is not quite correct, most of our audience is millennials,” he said.
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