I must mention at the outset that this is not a paid post. I haven’t been paid, either in cash or in kind or by any other means, for writing this. This is an honest endorsement, based on principles of market design, on why one of my wife‘s products is awesome.
I spent five minutes this morning interning for my wife. The more perceptive of you will know that she runs Marriage Broker Auntie, a one-stop shop for (right now “arranged”) relationships in India. As part of this, she offers a product called “Market Manager” where she manages people’s matrimonial platform profiles for a fee.
Five minutes of interning as a market management internship convinced me why this is such a great product.
The “job” I did as part of my internship was straightforward. First, I got a lowdown on one of my wife’s clients, and tried to understand him and what he is looking for in a partner. Then, I had to go to shaadi.com (the wife had already opened and logged on on this client’s behalf), where I had to evaluate profiles and decide on whether to send them an “interest” or not (think of this as being similar to swiping left and right on Tinder. Having missed that boat (I met my wife before Tinder had launched), this was interesting).
Every day, Shaadi.com sends each candidate ten “recommended profiles”. My job was to look at these ten on this client’s behalf and decide which of them to pursue. Having achieved the task in five minutes (I might have said yes to two or three of the ten), I was asked what the experience was like.
“I must say I quite enjoyed doing this on behalf of someone else – someone I don’t really know. But doing this for myself or for a close relative would have been nerve-wracking”, I said. And that is precisely why the Market Manager product needs to exist.
Having briefly been in the arranged marriage market before I got lucky enough to met my wife, I know the pains of going through the process. The matrimonial websites have a lot of “market congestion”, in the sense that for every profile you might like, you get shown tens (or even hundreds) of profiles. So sorting through the profiles is a massive task.
Also, the heavy congestion means that both errors of omission and commission can be plenty. It is very possible that you might decide to reject someone who might have been a perfect match for you. It is also possible that you might pursue, and maybe even go on a date with, people who are bad matches for you. And that, as a candidate in the market, can be extremely disheartening.
You send requests to people who you think might make for great spouses for you, but you might end up in their “errors of omission” pile. You lose heart just a little bit each time this happens. Then you look at all the profiles of people who are clearly unsuited to you. And you start wondering if that is your lot. And you lose heart a little bit more.
You lose heart sufficiently that even when an awesome profile comes across, you aren’t sure how to go about it any more. You are jaded. You are unsure of yourelf. Your self esteem has gone to an all-time low. You start wondering what might be wrong with this “awesome profile” that she has expressed an interest in you.
What if someone could instead manage your profile for you, weeding out the clearly unsuitable, and sending on the good matches only once there has been a mutual connect? What if you only got “qualified leads” that you should theoretically have a higher chance of scoring from?
A lot of people employ their parents or close relatives for this purpose, and while the candidates themselves might be saved all the trouble of weeding through and losing heart, you don’t want a parent or close relative to lose heart in your search as well. Moreover, a parent or close relative will only be managing one profile (yours) at a time, and when things don’t go well it’s as easy for them to lose heart as it might be for you.
A professional (such as Marriage Broker Auntie), on the other hand, represents you, understands you and looks out for you, but can also do so in a very dispassionate manner. They manage profiles of several profiles like yours, so the process is something they’ve refined. They know how to handle rejections and congestion without losing heart. And they are great at understanding people and finding out the specific requirements and looking out for them, rather than what a matrimonial site bot can do.
So if you’re right now in the arranged marriage market, do yourself a favour, and employ Marriage Broker Auntie to manage your profile. Yes, the service is not particularly cheap, but in terms of the mental effort saved and increased chances of finding a good match, it will more than easily pay for itself.
Sometimes I wish this service existed 11 years ago, when I was in the market. Then again, I don’t know what would have been the chances of marrying the Marriage Broker Auntie herself if she had been in this business then.