Scouring for the Hidden Skeletons: The State of Matrimonial Verification Services in India

A friend recently entered, what his family considered as ‘the marriage-able age’. He has done well – gone to a reputed engineering institute, bagged a prestigious job in the campus interview, went abroad for a long term project and finally settled in Bangalore. In short, time was ripe for the bride-hunting to begin and it had begun in all earnest.

I met the guy sometime back, while on a trip to Bangalore and while we sipped latte at Barista, I asked him about the criteria being considered when his parents were looking at a prospective bride. He said a lot of things, but the gist was:
1. They were keen to verify the job she had mentioned in her online profile.
2. They were checking her personal background including the education.
3. They were trying to check the background of the family. Were they really the kind of nice people they projected themselves to be, or were there some hidden skeletons in the cupboard?

Fair enough. For both parties. You would love to know that much before tying the knot for life. And even fairer since arranged marriages still rule the Indian matrimonial landscape.

The state of matrimonial verification services in India
The problem is how do we carry out such verifications? As an off-shoot of the arranged marriage scenario, the Indian matrimonial landscape is flooded with websites and databases about prospective brides and grooms (BharatMatrimony, Shaadi, Jeevansathi, SimplyMarry, to name just a few), but there is hardly any satisfactory way to run a background check.

Therefore, people generally inquire about the whereabouts personally, or in some extreme cases, employ the service of a private investigation agency. The former is too informal and the latter quite expensive. Unfortunately, there is no single, unified database for such checks, and if someone decides to hide something, it is well-nigh impossible to figure it out before the marriage.

Solution
This is where a service like JantaKhoj might be relevant. JantaKhoj brings to the reach of individuals the best of consumer services like matrimonial, tenant, domestic help, and driver verifications that have so far been under-served. For citizens, it means a considerable relief from the uncertainties that abound in a typical urban setting. Given that personal information is poorly integrated and is haphazard, JantaKhoj is a definitive move ahead. So the next time you want to carry out matrimonial verification, you know where to head to.

Stop worrying. Start the Khoj!