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“Internet in India is like Bharat in Ian McDonald’s ‘River of Gods’,” Maya explained to Tarun, as she sipped her second cup of black coffee at the Green Park Costa. “For every four men here, there is only one woman.”
In the science fiction novel set in futuristic 2047, India had splintered into several state along linguistic lines. In the state of Bharat, as elsewhere in India, a dysfunctional generation of Indian men didn’t even have an outside chance to marry because their parents’ generation had successfully weeded out women from theirs through thirty years of selective sex determination. So, stylish, sophisticated, successful men from big cities Varanasi and Patna wooed simple women from the villages in elaborate swayamvaras called ‘shaadis’ and city women fluttered from wooer to wooer, in the pursuit of the gifts and the game, without any intention of marrying them.
Tarun had recently broken up with his girlfriend of two years and wanted to get back into the dating game. So, he had looked around for a good Indian dating website, only to find that there weren’t any. At twenty eight, he was in no hurry to marry, especially since he had recently started his own retail chain, after six years in Unilever. So, he had shied away from the popular matrimonial websites — Shaadi, Bharat Matrimony, Jeevansathi — and turned to Maya for advice.
“No women on the internet means no women on dating websites, which means no dating websites,” Tarun nodded in comprehension. “But, what about all the matrimonial websites?” he added. “Surely, even they won’t work, if they are all male affairs!”
“As a matter of fact, they do,” Maya explained. “See, some women do create their own profiles on these matrimonial websites, even use them as dating websites. So, if you get lucky, you might get a date or two, but don’t count on it.”
“For the most part, women don’t create their own profiles on matrimonial websites, their fathers or brothers do,” Maya added, “and they will screen both your intentions and your bio-data before they introduce you to the woman, or even show you her photo.”
“But, I won’t want to go out with those women anyways,” Tarun argued. “What about women like them?” he looked around at the fashionably dressed women in the cafe, “What about women like you? You are single too.”
“I won’t be seen anywhere near a dating website, Tarun,” Maya laughed. “I don’t quite like the idea of being one of six women amongst sixty thousand men, as much as I like attention!”
“So, how would someone like you find a date?” Tarun persisted. “I know that you have been single for six months now and I know that you have been on a dozen dates at least.”
“Friends, Tarun, friends.” Maya explained, “You go out with friends, you meet their friends, who ask you out. That’s how it works. But you don’t like large groups, so that won’t work for you.”
“And, in any case, Tarun,” Maya put her cup down and added, “there are more men like you than women like me. How many women did you have in your IIM Bangalore class, or in Unilever’s Mumbai office? I remember that there were hardly any women in McKinsey’s Delhi office.”
“I have never really noticed…” Tarun spoke softly, as if to himself.
“Because you were dating the hottest woman on campus within a week of meeting her,” Maya completed his thought, “and you haven’t really been single ever since.”
“Hmmm…” Tarun sighed.
“But don’t worry,” Maya nudged him, “I know the perfect girl for you. I’ll throw a house party and invite both of you. Look out for the Facebook event invite.”
Gaurav,
Quit social media, become a fiction lifestyle writer
Gaurav: Glad to see that Maya is asking really good questions.
We love her. As good friends it is our duty to get the perfect match for her.
We asked similar questions and we came up with http://www.sootra.in. Sootra is the hottest Indian matchmaking, dating website that replicates online what Maya did through her friends in real-life.
We know that the coolest people are not on these matrimonial classified websites. These cool people today are on Facebook and they are connected to our friends.
Most of the matrimonial websites require you to answer a huge questionnaire and as Maya said the cool guys and girls do not have the time or patience to answer all these boring questions. Even when they answer those, most of them are lies anyway.
Sootra is a simple Facebook connect application that allows you to navigate through your Facebook social graph to find the perfect match. Your friends know the cool people who you may want to meet. With this we bring the real-life process that May explained to our online world.
We are just starting on this journey. We would love feedback from your readers.
We love you Maya. Gaurav: Are you connected to her on Facebook?
@eviral: After10 years of writing, I have learnt to expect nothing from the muse. Let's see how long Maya stays with me.
@ssotraindia: Yes, I see a big opportunity for a dating/ matrimonial website built on top of Facebook. As for Maya, she is part-fiction, part-fantasy, part alter ego.
Regards to your question about seeding Youpid.in using Facebook Connect;
Third party social network graphs always come with their own restrictions and limitations. We are building our user's social graphs focused specially for the purpose of matrimony, such that we can leverage it to offer several key offerings in the near future. Seeding the service, using an existing social graph would restrict us from offering a complete social matrimony experience to our users. Youpid's proprietary search engine digs deeper to find relevant matches from our users's social graph.
Furthermore, it was important to us for Youpid's matrimonial offering to be available to all consumers, regardless of their social networks preferences.
Thanks for your interest in Youpid.in
@Gauravonomics When looking for my Life Partner recently, I tried to look for a Service of similarNature as you mention…
I did find a Facebook application by an existing low key Matrimonial Site(dont remember the name) of India attempting the same, but had very few Members…
Most of the Dating Sites that are available for us are actually somewhat porn related sites and they spam you like anything…
A Friend suggested me couple.in but I think its a new site attempting a dating site specific to India.. didn't like it much…
In the mean Time I found my Life Partner/Soul Mate through Bharat Matrimony, Thanks to my Social Media Experience for that…
@rungss on Twitter
Bijay: Congratulations on finding your special someone
. http://www.sootra.in is a clean dating website for India and we hope you would refer your single friends to this.
Hi Ruchika: Nice to meet you
We beg to differ and we are with Gaurav on this one. We have Facebook Connect deeply integrated within our platform and we think that the coolest matches are on Facebook.
The jury is still out about the approach and we wish you the best of luck. We think we could make Maya really happy
.
Good luck to you too Sootra!
Hi Sootra,
Just checked your website and connected with my fB login, and a page full of errors threw up ! You might want to check it out.