“Their revenues are not that big and the problem is in India, it’s very lopsided. Women always have too much to choose from so therefore you’ll see very few guys get all the demand and all the other guys who come on these sites don’t know what to say. They say the most obnoxious things and the women run away. So I think there’s no there’s not real money to be made,” he said.
Mittal added that contrary to popular perception that the younger generation is more inclined towards dating apps, Shaadi.com’s audience is mostly millennials. “This whole thing about millennials not using matchmaking sites is not quite correct, most of our audience is millennials,” he said.
The Rs 20 lakh investment in Shaadi.com
Talking about his investment in Shaadi.com, Mittal said, “We had a company, where we provided IT solutions to other companies. So there we started Sagaai.com, which was the precursor to Shaadi.com. We had saved about $30,000 in our company. We were getting Shaadi.com domain for about $25,000... $25,000 or $30,000 seemed exorbitant but I believed that without a domain that can become ubiquitous, that can become known for the category, it’ll be tough and this will make our lives easier. So we used all our money.”
Mittal had recently revealed that he paid $25,000 (about Rs 20 lakh) when he bought the company's domain in the late 1990s. He also reportedly said that at the time, the company had $30,000 (about Rs 25,000 lakh) in its account but it decided to bet on the site because they believed that it would pay off in the long run.