Online Wedding Planning Services Startup Myshaadi.in Raises First Round Of Funding From IAN

Myshaadi.in, an online portal that offers wedding related services, has raised its first round of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN). The investors include active angel investors Rajan Anandan, Sunil Kalra, Ashim Mehra and Rehan Yar Khan. The financials details of the deal were not disclosed but Rehan Yar Khan will join the board of directors of Myshaadi.in.

Founded by Abhishek Jain, Myshaadi.in offers a host of wedding related services like personalised wedding sites, wedding event planning, budget calculator, shopping list, to do list, etc. The website also has a blogging section that talks about the latest trends and international concepts of wedding.

The site was launched in February 2011 and the company claims to have served more than 13,000 couples since then. Its target is to serve 1 lakh couples by the end of 2012.

"The fund will help us to strengthen operation and further improve our suite of services," said Jain. A B Tech graduate from NIT Jaipur, prior to starting MyShaadi, Jain was working with IBM GBSC, India.

Rajan Anandan said, "What caught our attention towards Myshaadi.in was that there was hardly any significant and focused player in the matrimony domain who offered a gamut of matrimony services catering to Indian audience. With wedding industry being the fourth largest contributor to India's GDP, Myshaadi.in is certainly in a very lucrative space."

Unlike regular matrimonial and match-making sites like Bharatmatrimony.com, Shaadi.com and Vivaah.com, etc. that focus on getting people married, Myshaadi's focus lies in the actual process of marriage and it provides wedding planning services for the same.

The site also allows its users to create free or paid wedding websites. While the validity of the free website (Silver plan) is only 3 months, the paid website (Gold plan for Rs 1,000 and Platinum for Rs 2,000) is valid for a year. Apart from the validity, paid websites also offers features like music, SMS reminders, photo importer and custom domain (only offered in the Platinum plan), among others. There is also an option of creating a Titanium website, but according to Myshaadi.in, that is available for "selected high-profile wedding clients only".

Myshaadi's direct competitors in the space are FirstPhera, WebVivah and Invity, among others. According to the company, the USP of the site is its simplicity, the ethnicity of designs and the fact that they are ad-free, among others.

Although the company wants to become a one stop solution for people getting married in India (Including NRIs), the fact that it is a late entrant to the wedding planning business means that its success and scale up plans would depend on execution and service differentiators.