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Weddings to have greater variety

Parul Gupta in New Delhi

India may become a hot destination for weddings this year onward, if not the hottest for honeymoons.

Corporates are drawing up plans for these weddings in the royal palaces, the wilderness, the golden beaches, and the Himalayas.

Shaadionline, promoted by Shunu Sen and Atul Raheja, has tied up with the heritage properties in Rajasthan, Goa, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh to woo the prospective takers of such marriages. It plans to organise weddings in adventurous and spiritual backdrops and is especially targeting the non-resident Indians and the foreigners.

Cox & Kings in India and JMC Thompson in the UK are formulating special wedding packages for the company.

Shaadionline has tied up with the HRH group, Umaid Bhavan in Jodhpur, Samode Palace at Jaipur, the Renaissance, Majorda beach resort and the Taj properties in Goa. The company is one of the first entrants in the complete wedding services segment, which is estimated to be Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion).

India, however, has a competitor in Sri Lanka, which emerged as the hottest destination for weddings from all around the world in the previous year.

The company has already opened its offices in Delhi, Mumbai, London, Dubai and New York. To promote its presence in the foreign markets, the company is setting up specialised wedding stores in the US, the UK and Dubai along with local partners. These stores will merchandise wedding items only and are called "Shaadionline wedding stores".

"We are planning to invite wedding co-ordinators of Hollywood stars from the US and the organisers of the royal family's marriages in Dubai to showcase the services and backdrops that we can offer," Jai Raj Gupta, chief executive officer of Worldcast Tehnologies, the parent company of Shaadionline, told Business Standard. The destination weddings would cost anything between Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) and Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million), he added.

He said the market was likely to witness exponential growth and while the company targeted organising about 20 destination weddings in 2002, it expected to organise 10 times as many within the next five years.

The company provides total services for a wedding at a lumpsum of Rs 10,000-40,000. Gupta said the company had a database of over 3000 vendors in over 20 categories to provide the services at a reasonable rate.

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