The wedding business is back — but it's gone digital
Anyone who has attended an Indian wedding recently knows the energy is returning. The baraat is louder, the buffet longer, the flower arrangements more elaborate. And the numbers back this up: demand for wedding venues across India has climbed to nearly 85% of pre-COVID levels, a sign that families are no longer holding back on celebrations they deferred through two difficult years.
But something has quietly shifted in how these weddings get planned. Couples and families who spent the pandemic scrolling through Instagram reels and comparing caterers on their phones haven't gone back to flipping through printed brochures or cold-calling banquet managers. The discovery and booking journey has moved online, and venue owners who aren't visible on digital platforms are simply being left out of the conversation.
Enter Wz Prime — a tool built for the banquet owner, not the couple
Most wedding tech products are designed with the bride or groom in mind. Weddingz.in, OYO's wedding vertical and India's largest wedding company by its own description, has taken a different approach with its new platform called Wz Prime. This is a technology product aimed squarely at venue owners and banquet operators — giving them tools to list, manage and grow their bookings across the country.
What makes this particularly interesting is the geography it is targeting. Wz Prime is currently live in 20-plus Tier II and Tier III cities, including Gwalior, Ludhiana, Jodhpur, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Varanasi, Guwahati, Coimbatore and Amritsar, among others. These are not the metros where wedding platforms have long been established. These are the cities where a family-run banquet hall might still rely entirely on word of mouth and a WhatsApp number painted on a wall.
Why this matters for a wedding banquets audience in India
For banquet owners in smaller Indian cities, the timing of Wz Prime's rollout is significant. Recovery is underway, but it is uneven — and venue operators who are not discoverable online risk losing bookings to competitors who are. A platform that plugs a local banquet hall into a national network of wedding planners and couples actively searching for venues could meaningfully accelerate how quickly those businesses rebuild revenue.
There is also a longer-term shift at play here. Indian families are increasingly comfortable researching and shortlisting wedding venues digitally before they ever make a phone call or visit in person. A banquet that shows up with photos, pricing, availability and reviews on a trusted platform is simply more likely to get that first inquiry. Wz Prime, at least in its stated intent, is trying to make that kind of visibility accessible to venue owners well beyond the big metros — and that is a development worth watching as wedding season gathers pace.