In India the word ‘Shaadi’ catches a lot of attention. anywhere anytime someone talks about getting married, this word ‘Shaadi’ sparks some kind of excitement in the ears of the friends and known ones listening about it. No matter even if its not their own and even if they are fed up after years of their own. Its still ignites questions and joys.
For the Bride and Groom’s family it is an event of happiness, but planning for the event can be stressful, because no matter how small or big you are planning the event, you still want it to be memorable and awesome.
If you spend more and hire well-known wedding planners, you still feel that something did fall short and many a times hiring high profiled wedding planners can fall too heavy on your pocket.
Manish and Sameer Grover very well understand the chaos behind wedding planning and so they launched ShaadiMagic.com. whether you need guidance or want to do things on your own, ShaadiMagic can help you plan it well.
And don’t worry about which city you are located in, ShaadiMagic has got list of 1.75 Lakh vendors spread across India.
We got an opportunity to talk to Manish, the Founder, and get to know more about ShaadiMagic and their team.
You seem to have entered a very competitive niche i.e. wedding planning, what made you select this space? and how would you describe your USP?
Wedding Planning is competitive space but no major player exists in Indian market yet. Wedding market is a $25b industry which is growing at 25% per anum and in the absence of any major player it provides enough opportunity to help millions of people who marry every year to plan their wedding on their own way and create magic.
There is no one stop shop and Wedding planning being such an elaborate task, it becomes very difficult without a guiding hand. ShaadiMagic provides a step by step guide on how to plan and manage a wedding. Helping to be brides, grooms and their family from woes of wedding planning by providing all the information such as trends, planning tools, online shopping facility, nearby rated and reviewed vendors, experts and personalized wedding website option at same place.
Do you have tie ups with vendors across India? If yes, how many vendors have you partnered with till now? And will we see more tie ups in the future?
Yes, we have tie-ups all across India. ShaadiMagic.com is currently biggest wedding planning market place in India with 1.75 Lakh wedding vendors listed all across and it would increase further. Though very few are paid associates and we are in the process to convert them into revenue generated associations.
You have built a search engine where people can search for required vendors. Tell us something about the technology behind the search engine.
Shaadimagic.com is a portal which aims to be a complete one-stop shop for all wedding planning needs
- Online Wedding Planning magazine
- Search Engine for the rated and reviewed vendors and agencies
We seek to provide everything that to-be weds might want to know about wedding planning, we provide them all the info they may ever need: vendors reviews, ratings, contacts; ideas and suggestions etc to make their wedding planning a much more organized process.
The platform is built using secure and stable open source CMS and with the help of its useful extensions.
How many weddings have you helped plan till now?
It is difficult to monitor the number of weddings in which we helped the to-be wed couple and their family to plan their wedding. Having said that we are live from more than two years and get millions of unique visitors till date and majority of visitors come on ShaadiMagic to get inspired, search vendors and check tips to create magic on the D-day.
One thing we couldn’t find on the website, we would like to ask, tell us something about the team behind ShaadiMagic, who are the people?
We are small six member team and are in expansion mode. The founders are:
Manish Grover, an MBA in Marketing and Engineering in Electronics & Communication is having 4 plus years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing and consulting projects for startups as well as with top management firm wherein he handled projects worth over $ 4 billion. He is also a fellow of Startup Leadership Program. He is a startup enthusiast who dreams to make his small venture into a ‘big corporate’.
Sameer Grover, an Engineer in Electronics and Communication is the Co-founder of shaadimagic.com. He is having 8 plus years of experience in IT infrastructure and support services. He is a hard worker, innovator and has clear set of goals in life.
Manish and Sameer Grover – Team ShaadiMagic
How has been the entrepreneur experience till now? What are the obstacles you had to overcome?
It’s been a quite an awesome experience with lots of ups and down and immense learning on the way. Since the inception, there has been no looking back; our team has started modifying, updating the portal, adding new features, forming strategic tie-ups and continuously adding new services & content to make it big in the wedding industry.
Online wedding planning being new in the Indian market, many people mistakenly understood as offline wedding planners or matrimonial website.
What are your future plans for ShaadiMagic?
We foresee our wedding planning portal, ShaadiMagic.com to be serving multiple countries in next 3-5 years.
Our Take:
If you are one of those who are soon to become a bride or groom, or have a wedding to be planned for someone in your family, give ShaadiMagic.com a try, and don’t get stressed be happy after all there’s a ‘Shaadi’.
Image Credit: nallamala
