Matrimonial sites like Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi.com have been around for a decade as compared to dating and friendship sites, which are just around three years old in India.
Yet, a majority (51 per cent) of Indian youth online are registering with dating and friendship sites rather than marriage websites.
This makes dating the tenth-most popular activity online, ahead of matrimonial services, according to a recent report on matrimonial services by research firm Juxt Consult. Dating is three ranks ahead of matrimonial services which follows at number 13 with a close to 48 per cent of the online users using the service.
With 60 per cent of the online user population below the age of 25, "dating and friendship is bound to attract more users than matrimonial services," reasons Mrutyunjay Mishra, director, Juxt Consult.
In 2006, matrimonial services had a mere 15 per cent of the online users population availing the service as compared to 24 per cent of the youth registering with popular dating and friendship sites.
The trend continued in 2007, with dating and friendship having a larger user base at 51 per cent as compared to matrimonial sites recording a 48 per cent of the overall user base registering with them.
The Year-on-Year (Y-o-Y) growth, however, is higher for matrimonial services at 130 per cent as compared to 88 per cent for dating and friendship sites, noted the report.
However, "unlike the matrimonial sites that command high user loyalty and brand premium for dating, social networking sites like Orkut and Fropper, chat rooms like Yahoo and even search engine Google, where users random search for sites with dating options, displaying no loyalty" observed Mishra.
The reason for no popular focused dating sites "is that the Indian culture does not have a concept of dating before marriage. And one would not register on a dating site for finding a life partner," Murugaval Janakiraman, chief executive officer, Bharatmatrimony.com stated emphatically.
"Dating sites would just be misused here," he added. Bharatmatrimony.com is one of the largest online matrimonial services having 35 per cent of the market share.
Interestingly, online India is not completely breaking away from the age old social norms by dating frivolously "There is a huge overlap between dating and matrimonial services. Almost 37 per cent of Internet users are into both the activities," said Mishra, adding: "Almost 72 per cent of the people who are into dating and friendship online are also registered with matrimonial search sites. Similarly, 77 per cent of the registered users of matrimonial services are also undertaking dating activities on the net."
Keeping track of preferences