Shaadi.com reveals ‘India’s Most Eligible’ - An insightful report

India’s No.1 matchmaking platform, Shaadi.com, has presented India’s first-ever edition of India’s Most Eligible. The edition has insightful and intriguing facts about what is desirable and what's not, in a potential spouse. This well-researched almanac comes from Shaadi.com, which has over 50 million users till date and an experience of over 20 years in the prolific business of matchmaking. The base of the study varies from different factors like profession, age, income and location. The research successfully straddles from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to Assam to Ahmedabad, metros to small cities & rural India.

The study further emphasizes factors that affect the desirability of an individual with the context of finding a life partner, which are listed below. The study has been built on a sample base of 2.5 million members (of which 1.6 million are males and 0.9 million females) who were active on Shaadi.com from Dec 01, 2021 to Dec 31, 2022 and is based on a per day data.  The participants of the study are exclusively Indians, who have been active members on the platform for at least a week in the last 12 months, making the findings most relevant and specific to the current time.

Key Highlights (all factors are comparative to the common average)

• Government jobs still rule the roost - India’s most eligible female is a Law Enforcement Officer, while India’s most eligible male works in the Civil Services. 
• Financial independence is important among men and women - Men making 30L+ p.a. are 190% more desired, whereas women making 30L+ p.a. are 17% more desired.
• Age hits men first - Contrary to popular narratives, age hits men harder in matchmaking and men after the age of 34-35 yrs find it hard to find matches.
• There are over 6,500 active members on Shaadi.com, who are aged 60+ yrs and are keen to give love a second chance. In fact, the oldest members on Shaadi.com are 79 yrs (Male) and 72 yrs (Female).
• Jobs in Civil services and Tech are most desired among men, while Aviation professionals and Architects are most desired among women.Men in civil services and tech are 2x more desired as compared to men in other professions, whereas women in aviation are 47% more desired vs women in other professions.
• Both unemployed men and women are the least desired.
• Increase in average age of singles seeking matchmaking -The average age of starting the matchmaking journey has gone up by 2 yrs in the past decade, with men’s age going up by 2.5 yrs and women’s by 1 yr.
• Working women receive more love - Non-working women are 31% less desired vs average, breaking the myth of Indian men seeking home-makers.

So, who makes the cut to India’s Most Eligible? Read the in-depth analysis here.

Expanding on the findings, Adhish Zaveri, AVP Marketing, People Interactive Pvt Ltd., adds, “This study indicates that as a nation, while we’re moving in the right direction for gender equality in marriages, we still have a long way to go in terms of truly balanced relationships. Who we find desirable is really the first point of establishing what this equation would look like after the Shaadi and the insights we’ve uncovered in this study are an honest reflection of India’s view on desirability in the context of finding a life partner. Aspects such as higher desirability for working women and specifically those with higher income, are early indicators that we are making important strides in bringing and retaining women in the workforce.”

Methodology

Shaadi.com is India’s largest matchmaker, with over a million users experiencing the platform daily from across the nation. As a market leader, no-one quite understands the world of matchmaking better, and the platform operates with the simple principle of interests and acceptance of those interests. To show that an individual likes someone, they send them an interest. If that someone likes the person back, they accept their interest. This simple paradigm forms the bedrock of Shaadi.com’s study methodology.

Study specifics:

âž”     This study has been built on a sample base of 2.5 million members who were active on Shaadi.com from Dec 01, 2021 to Dec 31, 2022.

âž”     An active member is one who should have been active on the platform for at least 1 week during the last 12 months

âž”     The study is based on Indians residing in India alone

âž”     Of the 2.5 million, 1.6 million are males and 0.9 million are females.

âž”     Top 10 cities of India represent 1 million, next 50 cities represent another 1 million and the rest of India is 0.5 million people

âž”     Representation by geography is of a similar split vs India’s population

How did Shaadi.com arrive at the numbers?

The primary metric for evaluating ‘eligibility / desirability’ is ‘number of unique interests received by a single person. To avoid any issue of people who may have signed up last, and thus having the fewest number of interests due to being present on the platform for fewer days, the study has rebased all numbers to ‘per day’. So, the most eligible single is someone who has received the maximum number of interests per day and vice versa, to ensure that even newer members get fair representation in the analysis.