That BPO employees work odd hours is a given. And stories in the media that have helped in generating bad publicity and dome much damage about the work habits and culture in a BPO firm is also evident. “How can one head for work in the middle of the night? The very idea is unfathomable,“ says a father who did not permit his daughter to work in a BPO firm despite a good pay packet.

And what’s more BPO firm employees have taken a real beating when it come to the marriage market. There have been matrimonial advertisements placed in newspapers that specifically say ‘BPO employees please excuse’. “I cannot imagine my daughter-in-law to go to work when we are all sleeping. The BPO industry my have done wonders for the economy but I think our society at large is not yet ready to accept a night shift job,” says Ravinder Gupta of New Delhi who is looking for a ‘homely’ bride for his MBA son.

Gupta’s is not an isolated case. Many parents of marriageable BPO workers are feeling the heat. “There have been many cases when everything was going good till I mentioned that my son works in a BPO. The opposite party immediately express their regret in taking the alliance forward,” says Brinda Baruha, whose son works in a top BPO in Gurgaon. “He is at a managerial level and does not work shifts, but the word BPO itself is enough. It seems that people have a bias against anyone who works in the industry.”

Such was the state of ‘BPO parents’ when Sanjeev Pahwa came up with a novel idea -- create a matrimonial site specifically for the BPO industry. And BPOshaadi.com was born. “We carried out a study on BPO employees and their parents and realized that they were facing serious difficulties in finding a right match though their careers were at great heights, owing to our society norms.,” says Pahwa, CEO of BPOshaadi. “It was not easy to the common man to digest how a girl and boy work late nights or full nights as BPOs”

BPOshaadi turned out to be the common platform where people of the same professional community could find matrimonial alliances. A BPO worker knows the inside of the industry and does not judge on that basis. “This site made it easy for BPO employees to find a match and to relate to each others work styles, lifestyles etc,“ adds Pahwa.

BPOShaadi has about 10,000 registered members and was converted to a paid site a week back. When asked about the success rate of the alliances Pahwa admits that all cases are not known to them. “Success rate is a factor which depends on the user as to whether he/ she would like to report it to us,” he says. “But yes there have been cases that we are aware of.”

Even newspapers matrimonial pages may not have a high success rate but BPOShaadi is a step towards providing BPO employees with a platform to find soul mates who understand and respect their profession.