How to find a groom for your daughter online, without taking over

Start with a conversation, not a profile

Ask her plainly: do you want help, and what kind? Some daughters want a parent reading every profile with them. Some want you to handle the rishtas that reach the family, and nothing else. Some want you nearby and quiet. All three are fine. What goes wrong is guessing.

Then let her write her own profile. It has to sound like her, because she is the one who will end up talking to the person. If you have already made a profile in her name on some site, tell her. Better she hears it from you than from a boy's mother.

On Bhava a parent can't create a daughter's profile at all. She makes her own. You can invite her, or she can invite you, but the profile is hers. That is deliberate. It keeps the search hers from the first day.

Match the Kundali first, and say what you found

This is the one job parents have always done, and it still belongs to you. Do it early, before anyone's feelings are involved.

Ashtakoota scores two charts out of 36 across eight checks. The usual minimum is 18. Read 18 to 23 as good, 24 to 31 as strong, and 32 and above as rare. Then stop treating the number as a verdict. A low score is not a bad marriage. A high score is not a promise. No chart, no score and no app can promise forever. If you want the longer answer, read how many gunas should match.

Look past the total at the doshas: Nadi, Bhakoot and Manglik. A pair can score well and still carry one. On Bhava every one of them is flagged, every time, even when the total looks great. We apply no cancellation. Tradition has rules that soften a Nadi or Bhakoot dosha in certain cases, and whether one applies is a question for your family and your pandit, not for an app. We would rather show you the flag and let you decide.

If you don't know the boy's birth time, use the best guess you have. Most of the score comes from the Moon, which moves slowly through the day, so a rough time is usually fine. There is more on this in matching without a birth time. To score any two charts, use the Kundali matching calculator.

What you can do on Bhava, and what you can't

When your daughter invites you, you get your own view of her search. The type is bigger and easier to read, and there is nothing in it to browse. Here is what it holds.

• Her matches, scored. Each mutual match with the full Kundali score out of 36, any dosha, whether either of them is Manglik, plus family and education. You also see the people she has said yes to who haven't answered yet. You never see anyone's birth date, time or place.
• Private notes. Four tags: we like them, a concern, we know the family, take it forward. Only she and you can read them. The person they are about never does.
• Check a rishta. A proposal reaches you on WhatsApp. Enter the person's name, birth date, time and place, confirm you have permission to use them, and see the score against her chart. Nothing is saved unless you tap Suggest, and then only the name, age and score.
• Suggest and invite. Put forward someone you know, or invite a family to Bhava.
• A weekly summary. Her new matches and their scores, how many of her likes are still waiting for an answer, how your suggestions went, and how complete her profile is. It never contains a word of her chats.

And what you can't do: message anyone, see her chats, say yes or no for her, see who liked her, see contact details, or browse profiles. She decides. You never message anyone. She can remove you any time. One family member is free; with Plus she can bring in up to five.

On her side, every member verifies a phone number, and a person on our team checks each selfie. The selfie is never shown on a profile. A chat opens only when both people say yes.

If she isn't on Bhava yet, you can go first

You can sign up as a parent before she joins. Choose "My child isn't on Bhava yet" and send her the invite, on WhatsApp or any other way you like. The invite stays open for 24 hours. She downloads the app, makes her own profile, joins with your link, and you are linked automatically. If she hasn't joined by then, the account closes, because a family account always has to be linked to someone. There is no parents-only Bhava. That is the point.

Before you send it, have the conversation above. An invite that lands cold reads as pressure. An invite that lands after a talk reads as help.

The lines not to cross

Every parent on Bhava agrees to four promises at sign-up. One of them is not to contact matches directly outside the app. It is there because that is the thing that goes wrong most often. A mother finds the boy's mother, the two of them start planning, and the two people who were meant to be talking find out last. If you want something said, say it to your daughter.

Another is not to share profile information with people outside the family. That covers the people she matches with, and it is good manners with her own profile too. It has her photo on it. Ask before it goes anywhere.

Don't turn a flag into a verdict. A Nadi dosha on Bhava reads as "worth a word with your pandit". That is the right size of reaction: a word, not a veto.

Don't ask every day. The one nudge the app gives you is a gentle one about finishing her profile, and only one can be waiting at a time. That is about the right amount.

Where to start this week

If a rishta has reached you, start with the chart. The calculator scores two charts out of 36. If your daughter is open to it, Bhava is on iPhone and Android. She makes her profile and invites you. The Drop works like this: up to five introductions every evening at 7, each already scored against her chart, nobody scoring under 18. You see her matches and leave your notes. That is the job. It was always the job. The app just gives it a room of its own.