Rishta on WhatsApp, without the group

What families are actually searching for

Look at what Britain types next to the word rishta: a WhatsApp number, a WhatsApp group link. Nobody is asking for another app with profiles to swipe; the family wants proposals to arrive where the family already talks, in a chat the parents can read, in a thread that keeps its own history. On that, we think the searchers are exactly right, and this whole desk is built inside WhatsApp for that reason. The disagreement is about one thing only: the group.

What a group does to a biodata

A rishta group is a distribution list, and distribution is the one thing a biodata cannot survive. The document leaves with a photograph, an age, a workplace, a father’s phone number. From the moment it is posted, every member can save it, screenshot it and forward it onward, and some do, into other groups, months later, long after the rishta is settled. Families find their daughter’s biodata still circulating years on, and there is no recalling it, because it was never theirs to control after the first send. The group is fast and free and those are its only two virtues. You pay for them with your daughter’s privacy.

Our guide to writing a biodata lists the six fields that should never appear on a document you cannot recall. If your biodata is already in groups, that list is damage control; better that it never needs to be.

The same channel, one to one

Here is the shape we built instead. You register on the website and state your requirements: sect, age range, education, where the family must be settled, whatever your rules are. Software applies them to the register; nothing that breaks a rule is sent. Proposals that pass arrive on WhatsApp, on the published number (+92 300 9448875, WhatsApp only), one to one against your ticket. The proposal carries no contact details in either direction: introductions open only when both families say yes. No group, and nothing forwarded onward. Registration is free; packages start at £29 and price the proposals, not the joining. Both sides of the corridor are on the register, families in Britain and in Pakistan, which for most UK families is the actual search: our UK page covers how the corridor and district-of-origin matching work.

Checking anyone who slides into your WhatsApp

The channel that makes rishta convenient also makes impersonation cheap: anyone can put an aunty’s photograph on a profile and start collecting fees and biodatas. Whoever you deal with on WhatsApp, us included, make them answer in writing before money or documents move: how many families they hold and how they counted, what checking happens before an introduction, what exactly the fee buys, where your biodata travels and when it is deleted. Our matchmaker-checking guide holds all eleven questions, with our own answers published. A genuine service answers happily. The other kind goes quiet, and its silence is free advice.

Common questions