 "Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO of People Group (Shaadi.com)")
Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal grabbed eyeballs on Thursday after a post shared by him on Instagram seemed to promote dowry (the practice in which a bride’s family gives gifts to the groom).
Sharing a video about a new feature on the Shaadi.com website, Mittal told his audience that his team has “simplified the process to calculate dowry” by launching an artificial intelligence-based dowry calculator.
“Earlier it was easy to calculate dowry based on whether one owned a car, house, bank balance,” Mittal said in the video, adding that the process has turned more “complicated” now.
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These days many factors have to be considered such as investments, political beliefs, vacation preferences, iPhone and Android debate, startup equity, among others, he said. “That’s why we have simplified this process by integrating AI, machine learning and ChatGPT to create DowrAI,” Mittal said.
The rest of the video showed how the calculator worked by requiring the users to fill out their details such as age, profession, monthly salary etc, to find out “how much dowry are they worth?”
DowrAI is an anti-dowry initiative
The video, with over 70,000 likes, raised many eyebrows as people questioned and criticised such a move, which seemed to promote the evil of dowry, which results in thousands of deaths every year in India.
However, DowrAI is actually an anti-dowry initiative, which aims to raise awareness about the evil social practice. Upon hitting the click button on the calculator, the result directs people to the fact that as many as 187,879 dowry-related deaths were reported in India over the last 10 years.
“Before calculating your worth, ask yourself what is her life worth? Let’s do away with Dowry. Be a part of the change now,” the website read.
Following the revelations, many people praised the initiative for its efforts in the direction of gender equality.
“Had us in the first half, not gonna lie,” a comment on Mittal’s post read.
The act of taking or giving dowry is prohibited under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, however, the problem continues to persist due to the deep-rooted gender divide in the society. In 2022 alone, 6,450 dowry deaths were reported, the data from National Crime Records Bureau showed.
