From the dotcom bust in 2000, to the 2008 financial meltdown and now Covid-19, the online matchmaking portal has innovated and come out on top every single time
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October 24, 2008. ‘Black Friday’ is indelibly etched in the memory of Murugavel Janakiraman. In one of the biggest falls in the history of the stock market, the Sensex tanked by a staggering 11 percent. The financial crisis—triggered in the US by the bankruptcy filing of fourth largest investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15—quickly snowballed into a debilitating pandemic hitting every country across the globe. A few months into the doldrums, while the US economy slipped into recession, developing countries were coming to terms with a painful slowdown.
Back home in India, things were fast turning chaotic for businesses of all kinds and entrepreneurs of all sizes. For Muruga—that’s how Janakiraman is addressed by his friends and colleagues—it was a matter of survival. His eight-year old online matchmaking venture—Matrimony.com—was under severe strain. “We were fast running out of capital,” he recalls. “It was a body blow.”
What made matters worse for Muruga was running a slew of other businesses, apart from matchmaking. “We had a job portal, online property vertical, and an automobile portal. We ventured into various verticals,” he says.
When the going got really tough, Muruga’s survival instinct got better of his killer instinct. “In 2009, an entrepreneur in me got transformed into a CEO,” he says. Employees were handed pick slips, multiple ventures were shut down, losses were pared and capital was conserved. The matchmaking business became his focus. “That became the core,” he recalls. Going back to the roots made sense for a venture which was born during a crisis year, 2000, when the dotcom bust happened. Matrimony.comwas a crisis baby. It survived then, and so also eight years later. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” he says.