Sunday, August 21, 2011

Online Shooting - Week 1 - Induction

As I now decided to start my search for my ideal soul mate I have begun the process of registration into marriage matrimonials. Just with few searches on the net I zeroed in on Shaadi.com and Jeevansaathi.com. I also then tried my hand at Bharatmatrimony.com.

Of course not all at same time in the same day. The first one was the Shaadi.com where I spent considerable amount of my time filling in all the necessary details, taking time talking about myself, my partner preference, doing some profile searches etc. I then observed few patterns -

1. Almost all of the folks don't prefer people who Occasionally drinks (i.e. me)
2. Real good looking beauties were looking at salaries of 7-9 lakhs
3. Searching for partners who have self-registered narrowed my searches down to 200 of which majority weren't that good looking and those who were were from either Bombay/Delhi (and yes they had Occossionaly drinks to their habit)

That's for now. After 2 days I edited bit of my description and re-posted my profile. Here is how it goes -

Hi, myself Karthik. Something about me - I love reading novels, films are my second life and friends come the next and family is always the first especially my loving mom. I am cheerful, happy and try as much as I can to avoid getting into any arguments. I always love to maintain peace around and am also easy to get along with. I like going out on trips at least twice over a year and love hanging out with friends.

Both my parents are working as bank employees. My dad works as Senior Chief Manager in Andhra Bank while my mom is a clerk. I love my mom the most and of course dad the second best. I have been very fortunate to have such sincere and hardworking parents teaching us all the live's best values.

I always believed in getting married a la filmi style finding the right woman at right time at the right place and had told my mom vehemently that if I get married its going to be love marriage. Reality seems much more different though. I have now decided the best way to go about is through net to which I have quick access most of the times. I realized matrimonial sites are fantastic platform to look for people who have similar set of interests and ideas and am thoroughly enjoying the process of finding my wife-to-be.

I like blogging and I reel off all my frustrations or my feelings through my blogs giving me absolute peace. Am an avid movie fan encompassing all genres be it English, Hindi, Telugu, Japanese etc. Love eating food and a huge fan of Chicken Biryani/Noodles. I also enjoy reading about latest gadgets and gizmos. Am a huge fan of Apple products. That's about me in short.

Hoping to find the nice and caring person with whom I can share and enjoy the life's next adventerous journey.

I added few more photos, got my cell number registered and before anything else I created another gmail id. Interestingly my activity monitor says it's a healthy 100% and also tells me its important to maintain so.

Basically I hate caste system and am pretty much open to anyone for marriage except people of Muslim religion. Nothing against the community but just that I may not be comfortable with it. Keeping this in mind I hadn't really gone to any community specific site so far.

After a week of searching I realized everybody has set of preconceived notions and reservations with their own communities hence I have relented to put my profile there too. Surprisingly the site is much more friendlier and sophisticated, quite in the leagues of jeevansaathi or shaadi.com

Well here is my ranking of the four sites in the descending order -
1. Shaadi.com - Fantastic site, excellent search features, large database.
2. Jeevansaathi.com - A naukri.com venture is sure to get full marks. Perfect.
3. Aryavysyamatrimony.com - was expecting large crowd of gultis being here. I then realized this community is not specific to Andhra, its all over India. So I guess searching here I won't be losing much. Just registered to it today.
4. Bharatmatrimony.com - Horrendous site. After signing up, I got a call, a real call from a person enquiring all my details when I am in the middle of my work such as my name, occupation, father's name, address, etc. Every other site had an IVR with press 1 to confirm option. Secondly, site itself looks like an outdated garbage version of v1.0. Not aesthetic and not good profiles too. It put my interest off.

So far in the first one week the stats stand as follows -

Sites registered - 4

Interests Expressed by me - 12
Accepted so far - 0
Declined so far -4
Interests Expressed by others - 1
Accepted - 0
Declined - 1

I guess I will be doing this series of posts and quite frankly am enjoying the process. The whole wait time adds to the fun. Let me see if my interest levels are maintained as I go on.

1 comment:

Nikhil said...

Dude,
From a few marketing courses I've taken, I realize the importance of targeting. Although your parents might have given the liberty to choose your soul mate on your own, there is most of the times a filter in a girls case called parents. SO remember your target audience is girl's parents. What you have written about yourself might appeal to the girls you are looking for but not necessarily their parents. Do you think parent’s would really read through all that you have written; even if they do would they be able to appreciate that? For instance, they wouldn’t be bothered whether you like Chinese food or Japanese films. And that entire 3rd and 4th paragraph is redundant. Write something in one paragraph like “Handsome, caring etc. working in MNC hailing from a respected family (or something similar) looking for a soul mate who is ….”.