💒 Indians spend 2X on wedding than on 18 years of education

The average Indian spends twice as much on a marriage ceremony than on education from pre-primary to postgraduation levels.

An otherwise value-conscious society, Indians love to spend on weddings, which could be disproportionate to their level of income or wealth. And this is irrespective of the economic classes, as the tendency to overspend is seen across.

India's wedding market is nearly double the size of the US's but still smaller than China's.

According to the Jefferies report, the current average expenditure per wedding in India is approximately Rs 1.2 million (around US$14.5k).

This amount is five times India’s GDP per capita (~US$2.9k) and more than three times the average annual household income (~Rs 0.4 million or ~US$4.5k).

Interestingly, this spending is nearly double the total amount spent on 18 years of education in India (from pre-primary to graduation), which is about US$8k (~Rs 0.6 million). In contrast, in the US, the wedding spend to education spend ratio is only 0.5x for public education and 0.1x for private education.

Why do we not have WedTech unicorn yet? Is it because the market is badly unstructured (and refuses to follow the diktats of aggregators?).