Matrimony is one of India’s biggest businesses

Vishal punjabi sounds groggy over the phone. “You know when you can’t remember where you are when you wake up,” he says. “I’m in Cannes, before that Barcelona and before that Dubai, London, Udaipur, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. Now off to Charlotte, North Carolina and then the Napa Valley.” This globetrotting lifestyle would be familiar to high-powered ceos, venture capitalists or investment bankers. Mr Punjabi is none of these. Instead, he produces intricate wedding videos for Indian nuptials: 65 in the past year, two-thirds of them for Indian couples who wed outside India. His expanding workforce includes set designers, sound and light engineers, composers, video editors, even script writers.

Indians take knot-tying seriously. Consequently, Indian matrimony is serious business. The amount of money which changes hands in relation to it can be staggering. Mr Punjabi charges between $5,000 and $50,000 a day, and some productions stretch to a few weeks. India’s regions have different traditions, each demanding specific services. The festivities often last for days, requiring constant attention from one business or other. Annual spending on these—from matchmakers and caterers to film and construction crews—may exceed $130bn, reckons Praveen Khandelwal, secretary-general of the Confederation of All India Traders, which represents small and medium-sized enterprises. If he is right, that would make marriage the country’s fourth-largest industry, behind energy, banking and insurance but ahead of cars, steel and technology.