Saying ‘I do’: once bitten, twice not shy

More and more divorced urban Indians are taking the plunge again and again. Reason enough for this trend to be converted into a business opportunity, reports Mayank Tewari.

More and more divorced urban Indians are taking the plunge again and again. Reason enough for this trend to be converted into a business opportunity. On June 15, matrimonial site secondshaadi.com was launched, and already, the site has 1,000 profiles of which a quarter are women’s. “The divorce rate in India has gone up by 100 per cent in the last five years,” says Ankur Warikoo, its co-founder. “It is an emerging market and the site is attracting the right audience.”

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Vivek Khare, vice president, jeevansaathi.com says this year the number of divorced people creating profiles on the marriage portal has doubled. “Divorced people aren’t interested in caste, religion etc,” he points out. “They want a match with a like-minded person.”

There is no fix on the numbers in this segment, but here’s a pointer: a study conducted by the International Institute of Population Sciences in Mumbai found that between 1991 and 2001 the number of divorces at the Bandra family court shot up by 56 per cent.

Benjamin Joseph, co-coordinator, Shubh Lagan, a marriage bureau in Delhi, agrees that the number of divorced clients looking for a match has shot up. “Instead of demanding horoscopes or pictures, they want a face-to-face meeting,” he says.

According to the 2001 census, 3.3 million Indians are divorced. Most of these divorces are filed by people under the age of 35: they have a lot of time to say, “I do” again.