A matrimonial website is a website or app on which people create profiles to find a spouse, and which is often searched by the family rather than by the person who will marry. It is also called a matrimony site, a matrimony app or an online marriage bureau. Online matrimony is an industry that India built for itself, in place of the relatives and newspaper advertisements that families once used.
A profile looks different from a dating profile. It lists the person's age, height, education, job and income. It often lists the religion, the community, the mother tongue, the family's details and, for many families, the horoscope. Many profiles are created by a parent or a sibling, not by the person themselves.
Here is a typical case. A couple in Madurai are looking for a match for their son, who works as an engineer in Chennai. His mother creates his profile in Tamil. She searches for women aged 25 to 29, Tamil-speaking, with a degree, living in Tamil Nadu. The site's recommendation system also suggests profiles each day, based on the profiles that she opens and the ones she skips. She sends an interest to eight profiles. Two families accept. But she can only phone them, or see their photos in full, after she buys a premium plan.
This is how most matrimonial sites earn. Joining, creating a profile and searching are free. A premium plan, for a few months, lets the family contact more people, see phone numbers and appear higher in searches. Some sites also offer a personal matchmaker, an employee who searches on the family's behalf, for a higher fee.
The biggest risk is fake profiles. A common scam goes like this. A fake profile claims to be a doctor or an engineer working abroad. After weeks of friendly chat, the person says that a parcel or gift is stuck in customs, or that there is a medical emergency, and asks for money. So sites check users in several ways. Identity verification (IDV) checks an ID document and matches it with a selfie, and the site marks the profile as verified. Deepfake detection checks whether profile photos were made by AI. Software flags behaviour that does not fit a real person, such as one account messaging hundreds of profiles a day. When a family reports a profile, the report goes to trust and safety investigation.
Sites also advise families never to send money to someone they have not met. Many sites serve one community or one language, which is explained in vernacular internet.