When Rahul Kumar returned from the US after his masters, his parents goaded him to start trawling through matrimonial websites. This phenomenon seemed common enough — friends Sachin Bhatia and Hitesh Dhingra had gone through the same. “We realised that compatibility was very important to singles and none of the existing services had any features bridging that gap,” says Rahul. So they pooled in #1 crore to fund their solution — matchmaking website TrulyMadly. Once people sign up and go through a verification process, it uses filters based on their interests to serve up a list of matches. And all this for free, for now. 

After a successful viral campaign on social networks, TrulyMadly plans to monetise its offerings soon. “Since ours is a community-based business, we are looking at organic growth. We hope to touch one million users in the next 18-24 months,” Rahul adds. The site currently offers free credits to users, but plans to build on revenue through subscription fees and mobile micro-transactions for virtual gifts by the end of the year. “In India, unlike the US, there’s no concept of dating strangers. We want people to open up to the idea of online matchmaking and drive the process themselves,” he adds. Whether singles will fork over money to meet, is the question