While Mehak Sagar Shahani and Anand Shahani say there is nothing filmy about their own love story, the two have made a career out of helping couples celebrate their dream wedding through their company, Wed- MeGood – a wedding planning website and app.
The to-be couple met in 2009, during a management internship with GlaxoSmithKline. Anand is a graduate of XLRI, Jamshedpur, while Mehak graduated from Delhi School of Economics.
They began dating, and despite only a few months of being in the same city (Anand being originally from Hyderabad) continued a long distance relationship for four years before finally tying the knot. Mehak recalls, “Both our parents are pretty liberal so there were no hurdles or issues.”
However, when it came to organising the wedding in Hyderabad, there were more than a few.
“Since I didn’t know the city well, it took me a while to find the right stylist and things like that,” says Mehak.
But, it was precisely those searches that laid the seed for WedMeGood, with the couple realising there would be plenty of others like them who were at a loss for wedding resources.
“There were wedding blogs abroad, but that concept had not really come into India yet, despite there clearly being a market for it, which we realised as we planned our own wedding,” says Anand, who then convinced his new life partner that they should quit their corporate jobs and go into business together.
“It sounds stupid now I know, but we were young and Anand has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to start his own business. He convinced me to take the plunge.
He quit his job at Abbot Nutrition as a marketing manager when we started the portal. I quit mine at American Express a few months later,” chuckles Mehak, still amused by the sheer chutzpah of it all.
As it turned out, the worries were in vain, and WedMeGood went viral, with Mehak already having tasted success earlier with Peachesandblush.com, a blog for beauty product reviews that she started in 2011.
“Mehak always had a passion for writing, beauty and fashion, so creating the content wasn’t a hurdle as much as the technical stuff was. We are managers, not engineers. We didn’t know how to code and things like that, so we outsourced that part before building our in-house team,” reminisces Anand.
“Today, we are the Zomato for weddings. We bring together couples and service providers, whether it’s photographers, dress designers, stylists, caterers and the rest,” explains Mehak. However, there’s no storehouse full of mangalsutras and compact make-up boxes or any other wedding paraphernalia. “We are purely facilitators, bringing together the best people in the business in contact with potential clients, who have very different budgets,” elaborates Anand. Whenever you or a loved one decides to tie the knot, help is just a click away.
Raising a stress buster
Since COVID-19, the couple has been working from home and that has come with certain benefits.
“We have a two-year old son and being able to spend all this time with him is a definite relief from the stress of what’s going on in the world. Just playing with him for 10 minutes in-between meetings with clients and vendors keeps us going,” says Anand.
Indeed, with the whole WedMeGood team working from their respective homes, the transition has been smoother than the couple expected. It’s almost as if it was written in the stars.