Saw a story on alootechie: “A group of students of the 2009 graduating batch of IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) have launched ShaadiEasy.com, a marriage logistics portal that will provide prospective brides and grooms with information on marriage halls, caterers, invitation card printers, car rentals and other services involved in a marriage process.”

I have a few issues with this site and the approach taken:

1. Clearly, the site aims to piggybank on the brand name of shaadi.com, the way secondshaadi.com also did. At least half the people who come to meet me think secondshaadi.com belongs to shaadi.com!

2. With Shaaditimes.com, BM matrimony services etc already in existence, why do we need another logistics site? Specially one which serves half baked information and details?

3. What was the hurry to go with a press release, on sites like alootechie, if you have an incomplete and half baked product? Why do entrepreneurs want to take a PR release route to try driving eyeballs in the short term, knowing fully well that a user will not return if the 1st time experience is bad enough? Or is it that in a society obsessed with iits and iims, people start assuming anything with an iit tag attached is newsworthy enough?

4. Clearly, the site aims to make money only by forwarding enquiries to the merchants listed on the site. For example, visit the bandwallas page, and try looking for more information on any of the listed vendors. Zilch. Which clearly means that only a basic googlign has been used to try and pick up information about the merchants, which limits the information made available to users. And hence, the big hope is that people will be forced to drop an enquiry due to lack of information available!

5. Some gadgets have been used, like gold prices, and weather, and google maps, and the entire approach, starting with the logo, is extremely old world, childish, and very very boring. Sorry guys, but that’s not the way to go about a site. There’s no harm in waiting for a few weeks/months, as long as you have power in your idea, and are willing to leave no stones turned to see it get fulfilled.

Leaving you with some screenshots. A picture might say what i was trying to say in 1000 words!