A loving and companionable marriage of minds, bodies and souls is a thing of utter beauty. Such a relationship can be liberating rather than restrictive. Yes, falling in love is wondrous but rising in love needs passion tempered with compatibility. This part sometimes requires the assistance and guidance of an expert matchmaker. And a true matchmaker, like Priya Shah, will arrange a match knowing that love will inevitably follow.
Celebrating 30 successful years of being “The Elite Matchmaker”, Priya Shah explains how digitization, Netflix and the pandemic have changed the matchmaking landscape and helped strengthen her core values even more. On the one hand, the quick digital fix has led to a string of broken hearts and cynicism. The risks include catfishing, algorithm-based, impersonal matching and lack of thorough vetting. On the other hand, a recent matchmaking reality show has made several people wonder about the “compromise” that some old-school matchmakers may expect and made them shudder at being labelled a “negative” client. Then again, the isolation of the pandemic took its toll on singles worldwide, making them yearn for a romantic connection. Priya has found her niche by rising above digital and old-world matchmaking constraints while being empathetic and accurate to her clients.
The most significant plus point about Priya Shah is that only she handles clients. She meets clients and ensures that the profile created is honest (no photoshopped photos can ever pass her keen eye). She vets the background of each candidate via financial checks, thorough references, and a lot more. She also spends time with her clients and understands their vision of life after marriage, their expectations, their “must-haves”, and their concerns. She additionally understands the parents of clients, too – their actual family dynamics, their expectations, and their disposition. She counsels everyone to keep the expectations real before suggesting the most suitable profiles. No client is difficult in Priya’s eyes, for everyone has a perfect mate to complement their temperament. This shows in her approach and her conversation. While she makes suggestions keeping the overall future in mind, she is firmly in her client’s corner and does not ask them to prevaricate or do anything that hides their true light. Mainly she sets the expectations right for all parties, girl or boy, mother or father. She doesn’t mince her words about the challenges and guides the couple and their families for maximum compatibility.
Priya Shah started her career because she understood how antiquated the earlier arranged marriage system was, with couples getting hardly any time to get to know each other. It was purely based on references of well-meaning but biased aunts and uncles. Priya got unusually lucky with finding a loving and supportive husband, but many in her time were victims of this system. She chose to intervene for loved ones and help ensure that there was communication, transparency and set of expectations before matches were made. What started out as passionate advocacy transitioned into a growing business owing to her success rate and her caring approach. Before she knew it, key HNIs were approaching her to find their child a suitable life partner until she was the matchmaker of choice for almost every top business or Bollywood family in Mumbai. Her fame led her to expand her reach across India and globally with enterprising clients from the USA, UK, Australia, etc. A full roster meant that she was working 24X7X365, but there was no compromise in her personal attention and effort for every single client.
Priya was the only matchmaker to innovate her approach. In a bold move, she called 200 singles with their parents to a meet-and-greet event at a 5-star hotel. Here the clients got to see and interact with all their choices in one space. Sparks would fly with some and not with others, and from there on, interested parties could start a courtship that would mostly result in marriage. This was her matrimonial version of speed dating, but the speed was limited to the event – not thereafter. Priya insisted on clients thoroughly getting to know each other before making the commitment of a lifetime. To help couples have a lasting match, Priya not only counselled them, but she also published a book that has marital pearls of wisdom. Her work has been emotionally and financially satisfying as she has not treated it as a business but has taken each client like family. It’s the reason why she still has calls pouring in from an elite clientele, trusting her help to find the perfect match. She has helped matchmake several couples in her early days whose children come to her.
Even today, with 18000+ clients and 9000+ successful matches to her name, Priya is still effervescent in her approach. Time hasn’t diminished her passion, her honesty, her effort, or her accuracy in matchmaking. She warmly invites marriage-minded, well-educated single people to reach out to her for a nudge in the right matrimonial direction.