Hyderabad: Apart from marriages based on caste, community, religion apart from financial factors, a new category has now been added to these, one’s professional degree and the institution one comes from.

Some matrimonial platforms and websites only allow alumni of premier institutions like IIT, BITS Pilani, NALSAR, ISB etc. to register, so that the professional clients wont have to plough through thousands of unwanted profiles that are found in traditional matrimonial websites.

“For working professional like me, the academic background and educational qualification of a life partner matter a lot. It is mainly about finding a partner with better understanding,” said Ashima Saxsena, a graduate from Jaipuria Institute of Management (JIM).

“Here the filtering process to find a partner is better as the academic background and profession come before other factors,” said the 27-year old graduate, who got her profile activated on a matrimonial website.

Meanwhile, for an Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) graduate, it is about the educational credential of the life partner they are looking for.

“Besides coming across alumni of targeted colleges, we can be assured of the educational credential of the profiles. When I registered with the website, my educational certificates and other documents were sought before activating my profile.”

Meanwhile, the charm of the NRI groom had seen a decline in India since the economic slowdown of 2008, but things are looking up now, say matrimonial experts.

“During the economic slowdown, there were cases when Indians as well as NRIs discreetly mention in their wedding profiles that they were not interested in NRIs, the remaining wouldn’t put ‘NRI’ as one of the options in the preferences. But the demand for NRI grooms, which fell by over 20 per cent after the 2008 global financial crisis, is rising again,” said an official with a website.

These days Indian parents are not averse to “liberal” NRI grooms for their daughters, he added.
Subject expert Sudheer Allam said, “Due to the cases of frauds involving NRIs, some prefer India-based grooms. How-ever, the demand for NRIs will always exist as there are many who want to live in a foreign land.”