Hyderabad: Little did a start-up matchmaking site even guess that its campaign would become a massive wave of youngsters asserting their identities.
It’s a campaign that features real people holding placards with statements like, “I am a Tam Brahm and I am not a vegetarian”, “I wear red lipstick and I’m not easy”, and “I’m a Jaat and I respect women”.
‘Breaking stereotypes’ picked up on Facebook and hit the viral peak on Monday when the hash tag of the campaign began trending on Twitter.
That is when the idea, which was a concept of the three co-founders at trulymadly.com, really opened up the scope of the campaign.
The grand reception on social media was a real surprise to the co-founders of the website, Rahul Kumar and Sachin Bhatia, known better as the co-founders of makemytrip.com, and Hitesh Dhingra, the founder of Let’sbuy which was later bought by Flipkart.
“Our objective was different than from what it has transformed into now,” says Hitesh. “It’s only now that we realised the power of the campaign and we have been receiving encouraging feedback with more people sending in their photographs as well,” adds Rahul.
The matrimony website with a demography of around 22 to 27 years, promoted the thought after they figured that “youth, whether from metros or non metros, was trying to fight these stereotypes”.
“The campaign originated internally as we broke the stereotype of pairing and matching with religion, caste and horoscopes. There are matrimony sites which are community based as well! But then this thought of breaking free from that way of finding matches resonated with independent and empowered youngsters and they associated with it individually and they made more out of it,” the co-founders say.
And Hyderabad is no exception to the viral phenomenon with everyone’s walls being flooded with the images. City-based cinematographer, Sajeesh R., said, “It’s also a fact that all the cities are turning cosmopolitan and the stereotypes have really stopped making sense. In fact, they cause more harm. And this is a nicer way of telling someone they are wrong. It’s part of a larger global rage of getting away from these labels be it through ads or even actual events.”
One among the active online catalyst has been Delhi entrepreneur and businessman, Rajesh Dudeja, of The Brand Express, who says, “I stumbled on this campaign when I was looking for a secular matrimonial site. And I found it so fascinating as most youngsters are bogged down by dogma and stereotypes. I shared the album for the benefit of my friends and didn’t know when and how it went viral.”
