How Matrimony founder Murugavel Janakiraman has become 'man of the match'

Lunch with BS: Janakiraman, who is in the business of helping people find their other half, tells Shine Jacob how his venture has been a deeply personal journey

“Why Matrimony.com?” 

When I announce that I am meeting Murugavel Janakiraman, the founder of Matrimony.com — best known for its flagship brand BharatMatrimony and other matchmaking spinoffs — this question comes not from my editor but from my wife. With a raised eyebrow and a hint of sarcasm, she says: “Go, find a match.” 

Later that afternoon, at Matrimony.com’s fifth-floor office at TVH Beliciaa Towers in Chennai, overlooking the Bay of Bengal, her voice still lingers in my head. Was she annoyed — or relieved? I am not sure. That’s a question to be parked for later, I think, turning my attention to the man at the centre of India’s digital matchmaking revolution. 

Enter Murugavel — or Muruga, as he likes to be called — dressed in a striped shirt and blue trousers. At 52, he has the air of a man comfortable in his skin, one who has told his story often but is not weary of retelling it. 

His company has just marked 25 years in business, closing the 2024-25 financial year (FY25) with a revenue of ₹425 crore. And yet, Muruga is not the archetypal tech founder. His journey is as much about grit and accident as it is about strategy — a story that begins in a dimly lit room in North Chennai. 

For the first 23 years of his life, the family had no electricity at home, Muruga recalls, settling into the conference room of his 20,000 sq ft office. The family of four lived in a 300 sq ft room in Royapuram in north Chennai. His father was a labourer at Madras Port Trust; both his parents were unlettered. “I grew up studying under kerosene lamps. My parents were uneducated, and I was the first in the family to go to high school,” he says. In fact, in his entire extended circle, he was only the second person to attend college. 

As a young man, his ambition was modest: A house with electricity and an attached bathroom. “That was the dream,” he says. Today, he lives in a plush bungalow in Chennai and runs a company that has facilitated millions of marriages across communities, languages, and borders. 

After school, he originally applied for BSc chemistry at Presidency College, imagining himself as a laboratory technician. But fate had other plans. On the principal’s advice, he switched to statistics, then went on to complete a masters in computer application from the University of Madras. His first job was with Nucleus Software. 

 

The meal arrives as we speak. It is a spread of vegetarian dishes: Chapati, vegetable kurma, carrot poriyal, bisi bela bath, puliyodharai (tamarind rice), curd rice, vathal, mor milagai, and a serving of sweet kesari. “My weakness though is fish, especially karimeen from Kerala,” he says. 

I ask whether it’s true that more parents than potential brides and grooms use matrimony sites. He smiles and instead begins the story of how he met his wife, Deepa. He points to the three paintings behind him on the wall — blue ripples of water with fish framed by swathes of green. “Those are by her.” 

In the late 1990s, Muruga had moved to Singapore and later the US for work. On April 14, 1997, as a passion project, he launched SysIndia.com, a portal offering Tamil calendars, festival reminders, and a matrimony section. It was more of a hobby than an enterprise. Then came the turning point.

 

Mangayar Malar, a Tamil women’s magazine, wrote about SysIndia. The article travelled all the way to Gujarat, into the hands of a family looking for a match for their daughter. That daughter was Deepa. 

“It was my father-in-law who created her profile,” Muruga says. “Back then, 100 per cent of profiles were created by parents. Today, about 70 per cent are created by the boy or girl themselves.” 

There was another twist. Both sets of parents had the same names: Janakiraman and Indira. “I’ve never seen such a coincidence since. It was decided by God,” he says. The couple married on November 28, 1999. 

But barely four months later, the dot-com bust cost Muruga his IT consulting job in the US. The young couple survived for months on $1,500 government support for green card holders. It was in this adversity that Tamil Matrimony was born on April 14, 2000, almost exactly three years after SysIndia. 

“The layoff forced me to dedicate myself to the venture,” he says, taking a spoonful of tamarind rice. Partnerships with Rediff and Sify soon followed, with Matrimony offered as a channel partner service. It was a paid service, with subscription priced at ₹300 for a year. 

By 2006, matchmaking as a digital platform had begun to take root in India. Matrimony.com touched revenues of ₹16 crore, attracting

$8.65 million in funding from Yahoo! and Canaan Partners. Expansion followed. “We also launched job, property, and automobile portals,” he says. “But when the Lehman crisis came, we had to close or sell some of them.” The company’s IPO came in 2017, delayed slightly by the disruptions of demonetisation.

 

Today, Matrimony.com runs nearly 300 portals in 17 languages, catering to a spectrum that includes regional communities, religions, castes, professionals, NRIs, and even LGBTQ users. 

As we polish off our lunch, Muruga says, “Other than karimeen, I also enjoy idli, dosa, and pongal,” and then gets back to discussing business. 

“At any point, around 60 million people are looking for a partner in India,” he says. “We have 8 million registered users — that’s only 15 per cent.” His target is to triple that to 25 million in the next 25 years. The company also operates in the US, West Asia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. 

According to Muruga, about one in four users on the platform ends up finding a match. 

Corporate success apart, Muruga says he is a family man first. Sundays are sacred: Reserved for watching OTT films — mostly Malayalam — at home with Deepa and their two children, Arjun and Anisha. Arjun, 23, has joined Matrimony.com as a product manager. Anisha is in Class X. “I work six days a week,” he says. “I do yoga and meditation daily. The seventh day is for family and music — mostly Ilayaraja and Rahman.” 

Faith, too, is a constant in his life. Though named after Lord Muruga, he is a devotee of Lord Perumal. “Whenever I land in a city, the first thing I do is visit the nearest temple. In the last four months, I’ve been to Kedarnath, Badrinath, the Maha Kumbh, and Sabarimala.” Before the company’s IPO, he says he went on a Kailash Mansarovar yatra with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

 

What next for Matrimony.com? “We’re aiming for continued growth in matchmaking and wedding services, but also looking beyond matrimony,” Muruga says. Fifteen years after selling its resume creation to interview preparation site ClickJobs, the company is re-entering the employment space with Many Jobs, targeting grey-collar and entry-level workers. The platform already has half a million registrations and will soon be monetised, he says. 

Also on the cards: Senior citizen matrimony, “happy marriage” services that offer sessions with tips on being happily married, and deeper investments in the wedding ecosystem, including mandaps. “My wife, my wealth, my purpose, my identity — everything has come to me through matrimony,” he says. 

As the plates are cleared, I ask what I suspect is the hardest question: Would his son Arjun, now working at the company, find his soulmate on BharatMatrimony? Muruga laughs, dodging it with good humour as he leaves for his next meeting. 

Two hours later, after battling Chennai’s relentless traffic, I reach home. As she opens the door for me, my wife, a former journalist, has her own tough question ready: “So, did you find a match?” 

This time, I am prepared. Channeling Muruga, I reply: “Definitely. Man of the match.”