Big Fat Indian Wedding
INR 10-13 lakh spent per wedding in India. Average annual household income is INR 4 lakh. Assuming 2 households spending, it's 1.2-1.5x their annual income. Assuming only the girl's family paying, it's 3x annual income. It's absurd how much people love to spend to feed and entertain the people they never want to see in their lives again. Also absurd, no big startup in this space. Why is no tech bro/gal conquering the wedding space?
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
It gets even better:
"Interestingly, an
average Indian couple spends ~2x on weddings vs education (pre-primary to graduation), in
sharp contrast to countries such as US where the spend is less than half vs education."
Indian parents are peculiar breed. They prefer to spend savings and fortune of their lifetime on private affairs like wedding; to please a bunch of people who don't care after few days.
That same money could be better utilized for education, business or simply inheritance.
Qwerty2398
Stealth
3 months ago
Marriages are a event where the entire clan meets. So it is a big event worth that extravaganza before. Now with the nuclear family and the sanctity of marriage falling the whole expenses do sound meaningless.
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The weekly why are we not exploiting the wedding industry with some useless startup is here
deadpm
Stealth
3 months ago
Introducing ShaadiPe.ai (YC 'XX)
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
The weekly I have zero value to add except for my half brained smirks but my dinosaur status will still get some traction here (I hope)
You need to understand Marriage is not a contract in Hindu Belief system. It's one of the biggest festivals that happens once in a life time. People tend to overspend but that's the joyous moment that matters. There are lots of tech spaces built around weddings. Matrimonial sites, wedding planners and many more...
IncompatibleOstrich
Stealth
3 months ago
"but that's the joyous moment" 🥲
Imo, there's no startup since it cannot be scaled. Wedding is a very personalized setup. Hence, so many different people exist, from caterers to designers, makeup artists, mehendi, decorators, wedding card makers etc.
Even shopping for bride and groom is again personal.
How would a startup even come up and take this segment? If startup comes up, they cannot keep high margin, as most weddings, they don't want to spend more
BiryaniEnthu
Stealth
3 months ago
I had this startup plan in college final year, full presentation would be somewhere too.
But making that I realised too many factors make or break this. Too many things to take care of, at any given point.
Like what they tried capturing in Band Baja Baraat was tip of iceberg. Just too many nitty gritties, things that could go wrong are endless
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
Would love to go in depth what you learnt from your experience
BiryaniEnthu
Stealth
3 months ago
Definitely! Should write it down sometime
Hi @DaringTrain,
I too agree that it is absurd to spend so much of savings on a 2 day event. But there are more reasons behind inviting people to marriage just rather than feeding them.
You are showing to the people that you are extending your relationship with this Girl/Boy or Family.
Getting into a relationship is not some fun or timepass.
I also know that marriages are breaking easily nowadays, this happens more when the woman wants to be independent and earn more. (No offense to female employees reading this). But if you see the stats, women want freedom when they earn more and think they don't need men, and the divorce rate is more here.
Coming to the startups, there are techies in this area as well who take care of wedding planning, photo and videography, etc. But there is a lot of competition here as well. As you are aware avg Indians don't go for pre-wedding shoots or wedding planners as it is expensive.
Alongside, it is more challenging and involves a lot of physical work like travelling and manpower, then tech work.
Feel bad for you brother. Marriages are breaking because women want independence haan?
Then what according to you the marriages are failing or breaking?
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There was one called Oyo Weddingz, that was in the space around 2019-20. Not sure if they exist anymore.
Check out Meragi.
One of the most interesting recent startups trying to solve for this space.
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
Yes, Meragi looks interesting. Wonder what their scale is?
Who said no big startups in this space - There's WedMeGood, there's a whole lot of planning companies that earn a shit ton of money. And if you've seen Band Baaja Baraat, you'll know ki it's a creative field and ye 12-14 lakhs wale budgets mein you don't make any profits as such. Small profits only. So either you'll need to do A LOT of the smaller weddings to be a true business(which is hard to keep to standard because of it being a creative field), ya fir you will go for Big Clients where margins are wayy higher, which most planners these days do.
EnragedLitter
Stealth
3 months ago
Do people with 4lakh household income really spend so much? I think north india drives up avg value by quite lot. I come from east india. We mostly spend 20% of annual income on weddings max.
Umadbro
Stealth
3 months ago
Your entire premise is: avg household income directly correlates to avg wedding spend. Without justifying it.
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
Where's the correlation?
Umadbro
Stealth
3 months ago
What is the basis for saying a guy at 50 %ile in income would spend at 50 %ile in wedding. Or a household earning bang avg income would spend bang avg on wedding. true for smaller data but don’t think you can take that linearly. People with more disposable income will have a different “spend /income ratio” compared to others. Your assumption is the ratio is same.
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
Point taken. It may be different. It may be similar. Do you have data points to show it's very dissimilar?
DaringTrain
Stealth
3 months ago
I'd would like to believe that income distribution is more inequal than wedding expenditure. The likes of Ambani/Adani won't be able to spend their proportional yearly income on their children's wedding even if they want to
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Several wedding planners/agencies exist that's serve the high-end market. Reason why there aren't players in wedding execution is the very reason as your post. People already spending over their income, where is the margin to make any money?
Do we even have the control on how and how much to spend especially in India? My parents alone paid for my wedding expenses which was planned by my in laws. We had no say in it. I wish this changes soon.
PS. It was love marriage
You could have been the change, by taking ownership of your private life. Instead you chose the easy path where parents bear the extravagant expenses of marriage.
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