The chamber's paper on emerging trends in rising popularity of online jobs and matrimonial alliances, revealed that jobs and matrimonial alliances through the online medium have more takers now due to the combination of both convenience and economic factors.
The paper revealed that the size of the matrimonial advertisement business is likely to grow by 60 per cent to reach Rs 136 crore (Rs 1.36 billion) and that of jobs by 75 per cent to touch Rs 429 crore (Rs 4.29 billion) in the current fiscal.
As per estimates, in 2005-06, matrimonial ads business was Rs 58 crore (Rs 580 million), while it was Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) in case of job search. This respectively rose to Rs 85 crore (Rs 850 million) and Rs 245 crore (Rs 2.45 billion), showing a growth rate of 48 per cent and 63 per cent in 2006-07.
The paper highlighted that online subscribers for matrimonial alliances were seven million in 2006-07 and are projected to grow to 9.5 million users by 2007-08 with the 25-34 years being the fastest growing age group.
"While the number of online job seekers was estimated to be close to 7.5 million in 2005-06, the following year the number rose to 10 million. In the current fiscal, the number of job explorers through online services will rise to about 15 million in the current fiscal," Assocham president Venugopal Dhoot said.
The male, female ratio in case of job seekers was 69 per cent and 31 per cent respectively, while junior, mid-level and senior executives accounted for more than 50 per cent of the online job seekers, the paper said.