Need a background check on your spouse to-be? Ask Humayra Online Wedding Market

How convenient would it be to have a wedding agency that, apart from planning your wedding, will also run a background check on your prospective life partner and bring all the tea right to your doorstep?

When Humayra Online Wedding Market asked this question on a Facebook post, it went viral.

The organisation's founder Masba Ahmed said 3,000 to 4,000 weddings happen across the country each week. But how many of them last?

To reduce the number of divorces and unhappy marriages Masba emphasises the need for transparency before entering into a marriage, which is where their unique Pre-matrimonial Verification service comes in.

"Sometimes people fail to do proper due diligence before going through with a wedding. Many important details are often overlooked. This ultimately hampers marriages and leads to divorces. This is where we come in. We try to do background checks for clients who avail our services and inform them about our findings," said Masba.

"However, our motto is to inform them only, whatever decision they take after that depends solely on them," he added.

Sometimes people fail to do proper due diligence before going through with a wedding. Many important details are often overlooked. This ultimately hampers marriages and leads to divorces. This is where we come in. We try to do background checks for clients who avail our services and inform them about our findings

Masba Ahmed, founder, Humayra Online Wedding Market

Humayra Online Wedding Market took its first steps in 2016 with event management and providing services like venue booking, décor, and catering.

Masba said he wanted to use a woman's name for the agency so that it would be memorable. He chose Humayra as it means red in Arabic and is a name Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (SM) used to call his wife Hazrat Aisha (RA) by.

Much like in the Netflix original series 'Made in Heaven', over time Humayra began providing all-encompassing services relevant to weddings.

Their services now include making wedding cards, arranging palanquins, choreographing dance routines, hiring DJs, photography services and more. But the Pre-matrimonial Verification service is what makes Humayra stand out.

The Pre-matrimonial Verification process

Masba's ultimate goal had always been to start the Pre-matrimonial Verification service. So, from the inception of his company, he tried to create a platform and a strong base of operations to gain people's trust.

"Now through this platform we can help solve various problems of the society," he said.

Since 2017, Humayra Online Wedding Market has provided Pre-matrimonial Verification services to 256 clients and has another hundred ongoing.

Masba shared that from sitting with the groom's or bride's family to doing some research on the person they plan to marry, the survey process usually takes seven to 15 days to complete.

A quick visit to their website shows there are three packages of their pre-matrimonial survey starting from Tk19,999. The packages can also be customised according to the client's needs.

The first step is collecting the biodata of the bride or groom and analysing how many days the research might need. The organisation mostly looks into whether the information provided by the bride or groom are true and whether they have any cases against them, have multiple marriages, are addicted to drugs, or anything else the client requests by analysing their social media handles, looking into their friend circles, verifying educational qualifications and family background through sources in the locality and more.

While organising weddings in different cities of the country, Masba formed connections with people all across Bangladesh, which helped him in these fact-finding missions.

He now collaborates with 22 retired law enforcement officials who work as consultants and has university ambassadors and vendors in various districts of the country. Currently, there are 11 full-time employees working at Humayra Online Wedding Market.

The impediments and the inspiration

One of the impediments to providing inquiry or verification services is the absence of licensing opportunities in the country. The Bangladeshi government does not provide any licences to agencies which only provide fact-finding services.

Masba has obtained multiple trade licences for different categories of services that Humayra Online provides.

"There are many similar companies like mine, but not many of them come to light due to lack of licensing. And I think there is a need for more companies like this so people can obtain their required information, which might be even life-saving in many cases," he said.

The beginning was not so smooth, Masba continued, "Many people taunted me because I chose to start this business rather than continue the job I was in after completing my BBA and MBA from the University of Dhaka. But I always wanted to do something unique and combined with the fact that come rain or shine, weddings do not stop in this country, I decided to start this business."

One of the inspirations behind him running background checks and verifications was his father Tofail Ahmed — a freedom fighter commander in the Dalal Bazar area.

"I used to hear accounts of how my father, along with his cohorts used to collect information from various sources during the Liberation War about where the Pakistani military forces were stationed or from which direction they were coming. These stories inspired me later in life to start doing my own kind of research. Also, various cartoons and stories like Tintin, Feluda, Sherlock Holmes, and Masood Rana also fueled that inspiration," Masba said.