Priyanka Saxena Ray
Dulhaniyaa.com is one of India’s fastest growing and most loved online wedding portal. Barely 3 years since inception, including Covid times which didn’t see a gap in services, Dulhaniyaa is a DIY portal with almost 30,000 vendors listed across multiple Indian Weddings services to assist families looking for the latest trends &, to find the best of vendors in their desired range of services at the most amazing prices.
The Pandemic has redefined the way weddings are held in India. Do you agree? What really has changed?
Yes, the Pandemic has changed the way all businesses work and most definitely in the Indian Weddings space for sure. Earlier, the weddings were planned well in advance, sometimes even a year ahead. Now with so much uncertainty ruling the roost thanks to constantly changing Covid protocols and numbers allowed in different Indian states, advance planning is no longer happening or even a necessity. People are shying away from long term planning, preferring to confirm bookings and scale of the wedding very close to their wedding date!
This trend will continue through June – July 2021. Dulhaniyaa is handling even 15 – 20 pax Weddings at this time as those couples are getting married for various compelling reasons. So June – July are definitely going to miss the Big Fat Indian Wedding!
The industry is facing multiple challenges w.r.t. sourcing good vendors at prices that match customer expectations without compromising on quality. Large companies like ourselves are slated to be more suitable and cost effective for wedding clients to work with due to the sheer size of our vendor network and volume of weddings delivered.
How different are the ‘new normal weddings’ to the conventional ones?
The number of guests allowed due to Covid safety norms have decreased drastically, so people are going in for intimate weddings – some are even using their own homes or farmhouses with private catering, good photography; brides are going in for a higher grade makeup artiste and more expensive giveaways for guests.
On the positive side, in the “New normal” for a wedding of 50-100 people and the lack of international destination wedding options, the pan India domestic market is winning in a big way! From a Wedding Planner’s perspective – depending on the local support system and connects, big players with a national network can win more.
The decision making is now being influenced more and more by the wedding couples and consequently, what is being highlighted now are the experiential stay / themed weddings!
So destination weddings – décor – food – photography – dressing – entertainment are key focus points for discussion and debate! Overall, the pandemic has helped push the Indian wedding client more towards an intimate destination wedding instead of a regular city wedding with a huge guest list and building more concepts and experiences for their guests.
What are the top three concerns that people approach a wedding organizer with now? Were the concerns different in the pre-pandemic era?
Primarily and especially during Covid times, the top three things that clients want / expect from their Wedding Planner are –
- Ability to organise Permissions / E-Passes / Police and Excise Clearances effectively, smoothly & in a timely fashion. Plus be great at damage control, especially on site.
- Flexibility in contracting with varied third party vendors due cancellations or date changes and good vendor management. Demonstration of strength in the areas of hotel and airline relationships too.
- Pricing. India is a very price sensitive market and even in luxury events, the value proposition has to be really robust.
How has your venture Dulhaniyaa.com performed during these tough times? What special or extra are you offering to the customers who approach you?
Earlier on, the peak wedding time was from October to February with the tipping point being November – December. Now, we have wedding enquiries even for August and September 2021! As far as the high season in November- December goes, we have multiple queries for the same set of dates already with almost five months to go. All in all, we are expecting an extremely profitable season ahead. The market will resonate more with our positive sentiment and we feel this Wedding Market Frenzy will escalate from mid-June, around the time when most of India will enter into phased unlocking.
We are currently booked for 8-10 intimate weddings in June / July which are now on a smaller scale. Based on the quantum of active enquiries with us, we are confident of delivering 100+ weddings by December 2021. As far as our offering goes, we have kept it very simple and focussed on two aspects. First, being extremely price friendly for the clients and the second, offering them peace of mind of guaranteed delivery, even if their wedding gets impacted during an unforeseen lockdown.
Our team has executed a ramp of different weddings throughout the Covid year (ongoing). When the current Lockdown happened, we reassured our clients that we would be ready, willing and able to deliver whenever the new wedding dates were set so there was NO stress for them on account of delivering the same wedding at even a lower budget & helping them renegotiate with all vendors sitting out of their homes comfortably.
When in your opinion, will things go back to the way they were in the pre pandemic times (if at all they will)?
This question needs to be addressed on two planes.
Domestically, once the vaccination numbers improve, infections drop and unlock happens from June – July 2021; pan India, Weddings will see an upsurge and there will be a steady build up from then onwards.
Internationally, flights should resume in the last quarter of 2021 and those destinations respecting the Indian Weddings market will start getting business (Thailand, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Nepal and Turkey). For Europe, long haul and some other destinations with stricter norms and protocols, Indian Weddings will happen from March – April 2022 onwards!
Is there any more information that you would like to share with us?
Our mantra for 2021 is COLLABORATION!
We have been focussing on signing up B2B relationships across multiple & cross industry verticals, all over India.
Buoyed by the success of our performance even during Covid times, *Dulhaniyaa.com* has garnered exponential business and remained upbeat.
Between our website and various social media handles, we garner almost a million hits every month.
Our three existing verticals viz. Event Planning, Event Photography and Bridal/ Family Makeups are performing brilliantly and we are handling a good number of weddings this year.
We have a fantastic team that has grown from 15 people to 60+ in just 10 months since the previous lockdown.
It gives us great pride in the fact that we are the only Indian Wedding portal making it to the Top 10 with no foreign funding in a short span of just three years. We foresee a huge growth this year and would shortly be announcing the launch of more verticals and offices across India in the coming 6 months.
