Shaadi.com Prices Uk
Francisco Raya
Shaadi.com uses AWS to deploy its key products, including the matrimonial portal, video calling features, user chats, and matching campaigns that recommend compatible users to each other. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Shaadi faced unprecedented scaling challenges that increased their costs by 37%. However, with the help of AWS Enterprise Support, the Shaadi team saved costs while scaling using Amazon EBS gp3 volumes.
The Shaadi matrimonial portal on AWS consists of a three-tier architecture designed to have object-relational-mapper (ORM) as an abstract layer. This enables front-end web services to interact with any backend databases, and to scale the middle tier independently using a microservice architecture.
As customers register on shaadi.com, they generate traffic through the stack to DB1 and DB2 for creating and updating profile metadata. As they begin interacting with other profiles, such as tagging another user profile as a favourite, sending an interesting request, or initiating a chat request, shaadi.com customers drive traffic to DB3. In addition to user-generated traffic, shaadi.com also runs hourly profile match campaigns that drive additional traffic to DB3. Data synchronization between primary and secondary databases is critical. If there is a delay or failure, users can miss interest requests and chat messages, or see outdated lists of favourite profiles, all of which leads to a poor matchmaking experience.
In April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread across India and around the world, affecting many lives. Shaadi.com experienced an unanticipated 30% increase in new users within the first few weeks of the nationwide lockdown. The front-end services, built using Auto Scaling Groups, automatically provisioned new infrastructure to meet the demand without any impact on customer experience. As these additional users completed registration and started to interact with each other, there was an increase in overall traffic. Before the lockdown, there were 1.8 million interest requests/day between prospective candidates served by DB3, which increased to 2.5 million interest requests/day after the lockdown. With the help of Datadog, an application performance-monitoring tool, we noticed that an increase in interest requests lead to an increase in daily user profile interactions and chat exchanges. This further grew daily backend DB3 traffic by 58%. Increased traffic to DB3 resulted in delayed database synchronization and longer API response times. To improve the response time, additional DB3 servers were added which increased back-end database costs by 37%. However, in February 2021 another unexpected increase in new users challenged us to find a way to scale out the databases at a lower cost. Next, we share our initial approach to scaling and then describe how Enterprise Support suggested gp3 volumes to simplify the architecture and lower performance-scaling costs
During the first few weeks of our COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020, at peak activity times during the day, end-users experienced between 10-second and 500-second delays for routine actions. These delays impacted functionalities such as seeing the list of matched candidates, sending and receiving chat messages, seeing connection request updates or viewing their list of candidate matches. This poor performance lasted about 2 hours each day, resulting in a poor customer experience. Additionally, during these peak hours, with the application timing out, scheduled matching campaigns (matching suitable candidates based on search criteria and preferences) failed to generate new matches.
For the front-end and middle-tiers, Shaadi.com created new AMIs with gp3 volumes and redeployed the services in phases using the existing Auto Scaling groups. For the back-end database servers, Shaadi.com made an online transition using the Elastic Volume feature, starting with secondary databases. With a few simple clicks, the DBAs modified the existing database volumes from gp2 to gp3 without any disruption to the application and database.
In 1997, we launched the first version called sagaai.com. [Sagaai means engagement in Hindi.] It was an experiment. Our focus was more on the web development piece because that was what was earning the money. We put all that money in this business. In 2001, I quit my job in the U.S. and moved back [to India], and we changed the name to shaadi.com.
India Knowledge at Wharton: Shaadi.com has extended its services to various platforms such as mobile, television and DTH [direct to home satellite television]. How successful have those been?
India Knowledge at Wharton: In the offline space, shaadi.com has launched Shaadi Centers and now has a network of over 100 centers across 87 Indian cities. Why was there need for a brick-and-mortar complement to the online presence?
Mittal: It has to be looked at in the context of what we do. In 2004-2005, every year we used to talk about the inflexion point of the Internet that never really was happening. So we started to think about how we could reach out to people who are technology-phobes, who may never really use a computer and are still responsible for making this decision for their children. We wanted take the advantages of online, which is the reach and the immediacy, and those of offline, which is the trust factor and a relationship, and combine them. That is how we came up with a center model.
India Knowledge at Wharton: You recently launched Angry Brides, an online game modeled on Angry Birds. This has received considerable media attention. What are some other online marketing strategies you plan?
Dowry was abolished in India in 1961, so when an X user posted about a dowry calculator, it gained a lot of attention among users. But the calculator, hosted on Anupam Mittal's shaadi.com, has a hidden and powerful message that has struck a chord with people. The calculator asks users "How much dowry are you worth?" It then displays a photo of a professionally dressed man with images of a house, a globe, books and bags of money in the background. You will think it's actually a way to calculate the dowry amount. Well, read on.
Once users click on the 'Calculate Dowry Amount' button, they are taken to a page that reads, "91,202 dowry deaths were reported in India between 2001-2012. Do you still want to know?" It adds, "Is her life worth the price? Let's make India a dowry-free society. Be the change. Make a difference."
It is this message that has led to users praising the initiative. The calculator was shared by X user @DoctorHussain96 who said, "Initially was shocked to see Dowry calculator in Shaadi.com. A segment of the site show users how much they are worth in the 'dowry' stakes. When you enter your details like educational qualification and income, you are in for a surprise."
"Shameful to see that people are still taking dowry in some form or other," commented one user. "Logged in accounts using the calculator should be reported to authorities. All accounts should require a signed affidavit saying they won't accept dowry in any form," said another.
- I recognize a very large number of women who had profiles on there 5-10 years ago (In many instances, their profiles appear to have the same photos ). Even when I don't recognize a photo, other profile details show that they have been searching for years. For example, there will be a 40 year old women whose profile reads "Hi there! I am 35 years old and recently moved to X to start a new job." Also, most of the profiles are of women in their mid 30s or older.
- Women in America have updated their income cutoffs. It used to typically be "$100,000 or above" and now most profiles are "125,000 or above" or "150,000 or above". In the UK, they seem to have increased the lower cutoff more modestly from 40k pounds to 50k pounds.
- As was the case back then, they are not shy about being EXTREMELY specific about what they require, even though they are looking for a partner from within a tiny population to begin with. For example, 35 year-old women looking for guys who are 35-37, 5'2" women looking for guys who are 5'10"-6'0", women looking for men in very limited geographic areas (where very few Punjabis live), or women looking for men who have very specific occupations.
I just want a Sikh man who is religious , caring and understanding and would be fine with me wanting to be a stay at home mom in the future if i want lol. Corporate jobs add so much stress to your life. Hard to take care of children and home while working 9 to 5. I'm exhausted while working remotely and not even having to commute. Now a days its hard to run a home on single income and unless the husband earns more than average it's not really possible for women to stay at home. Even the house prices are skyrocketing. No idea what will it be like in a few years.
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