New Delhi: A new survey of India-based professionals found that tech workers in India have put a price tag on a “marriage-ready” man.
According to Blind, an anonymous app for professionals, 69% of unmarried respondents said a man needs to earn at least ₹25 lakh per annum (LPA) before he is marriage-ready. By contrast, 48% of married respondents agreed to this requirement. Overall, 55% of those surveyed set the minimum at ₹25 LPA or higher, while nearly one in three (29%) put the bar above ₹50 LPA.
The survey was conducted between August 4 and August 11 among 1,473 India-based professionals, where questions are asked on financial expectations around marriage. Blind is a US-based anonymous app where 14 million verified professionals worldwide engage in honest conversations across companies and industries. Over 90% of employees at Meta, Uber, PayPal, and Capital One, as well as more than 70% of Microsoft employees in India, are users of the platform.
The response hardly varied with gender. 67% of women and 59% of men set the bar at ₹25 LPA or more.
The respondents form a relatively affluent group with 78% of them working at global tech companies. According to Blind, ₹50 LPA is reached by just over 1% of taxpayers based on income-tax return data. Married professionals were noticeably less likely to treat such incomes as a prerequisite, suggesting that expectations among singles remain higher than what most people actually earn.
Financial expectations often extend beyond salary. When asked whether money or assets such as cash, gold, vehicles, property or wedding costs had been given by the bride’s side in their own wedding or one close to them, 51% said yes. One in five put the value at ₹25 lakh or more, and 10% at over ₹1 crore. Dowry remains illegal under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961.
On this question, gender was the sharper dividing line. 67% of women reported that money or assets had changed hands, compared with 50% of men. The gap may be in what gets counted.
“Often nothing is asked for outright, but the groom’s side may read an expensive wedding as a deserved status symbol of his salary or property, while the bride’s side, paying for it, sees a dowry by another name. The expectation is priced without anyone having to say it out loud,” Blind said.
(Edited by Aakriti Handa)