Business | The nuptials-industrial complex

Matrimony is one of India’s biggest businesses

The wedding industry is a marriage of everything

BYCEJW Guests throw rice grains over a newly married couple to symbolize abundance and good fortune at a Hindu wedding in India
|Mumbai

Vishal punjabi sounds groggy over the phone. “You know when you can’t remember where you are when you wake up,” he says. “I’m in Cannes, before that Barcelona and before that Dubai, London, Udaipur, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. Now off to Charlotte, North Carolina and then the Napa Valley.” This globetrotting lifestyle would be familiar to high-powered ceos, venture capitalists or investment bankers. Mr Punjabi is none of these. Instead, he produces intricate wedding videos for Indian nuptials: 65 in the past year, two-thirds of them for Indian couples who wed outside India. His expanding workforce includes set designers, sound and light engineers, composers, video editors, even script writers.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Matrimony Inc”

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