Matrimony.com launches RainbowLuv for LGBT community

The marriage market is expanding. The matrimonial apps industry, which is in a slump in registrations after a spike during the pandemic years, is now looking at newer communities and groups to get more users on board.

Eyeing the LGBTQIA+ community, Matrimony.com said that it has launched a platform called RainbowLuv which lets users look for serious relationships unlike casual matches offered by online dating apps.

The idea came from a member of the LGBT community who went up to the company's chief product officer at a conference urging them to open up matchmaking for the community.

Bhatia added that after seeing the need gap and following many workshops with the LGBT community, the company decided to start the new platform which took about two years to launch.

While the company has no target for a user base in the first year of launch due to lack of data, Bhatia noted that the potential is big.

"Target is difficult because there is not much concrete information available in terms of market size in India for the community. One data point that is concrete which we have from the ministry of health and family welfare is that there were 2.5 million individuals back in 2012 who had declared that they are from the LGBT community. But the market is far bigger. The estimates we have is between 10 million to as high as 190 million in terms of the population which belongs to the LGBTQ community," he said.

For any matrimony platform, Bhatia said that the addressable market is 20-30 percent of the entire population which falls in the matchmaking bracket.

"So, 8-15 million is the addressable market where people might be looking for a life partner from this (LGBTQIA+) community. Also, smaller markets have bigger potential because cities like Mumbai and Delhi have their local LGBT chapters (meetings) where people catch up. But in smaller cities it is restricted. So, we expect it (new platform) to get more accepted in the smaller cities," said Bhatia.

In terms of features, Sawant said that there are over 65 gender identities on the platform and more than 40 pronouns on the platform. "This is going to make life easy and a lot of people will get educated both from within the community as well outside," he said.

Bhatia said that the new platform is similar to their other matrimony apps which let users give detailed information for their profile. In addition, the platform has added objective in the profile which mentions the reason behind the proposed relationship. "Some members of the community had said that whatever is available on the market are people looking for hook-ups. So, they (LGBT community members) asked us to add the objective aspect in the profile to specify that a user is looking for a steady relationship," he said.

Then there is government-approved ID verification. "The reason behind this was that the community told us there is lot of discrimination they face and are subjected to abuse which can be reduced if there is such a verification process," Bhatia said.

He added that when the team was speaking to members of the LGBT community, especially people from smaller towns, they found out that many have not come out in the open but are in need of a partner.

Focus on new platforms will be key for matrimonial platforms which saw a peak in the last two years but are seeing decline in new registrations currently. "Covid was a blessing in disguise for us because a lot of people who were on the fence to try out a matrimony app came in and tried it. So, it has been five quarters since we had q-o-q (quarter-on-quarter) double-digit growth. From the peak we saw in terms of registrations (people creating profiles), there has been a slowdown. But from the revenue standpoint, we are seeing healthy growth," said Bhatia.

He added that the online matchmaking market in India, which is growing at 8-12 percent annually, is currently a Rs 800-900-crore market shared between the top three national players.

"There are lot of regional players also focusing on specific communities but those will be small. So, approximately, it is a Rs 1,000 crore online matchmaking market in India," Bhatia said.