Meet the men who claim writing love letters to other men's girlfriends is their passion

The founders of The Indian Handwritten Letter Co. wanted to help people in communicating their thoughts better and strengthening their relationships. The company describes itself as "Your personal letter writer."

The write letters on behalf of their clients who have commissioned them to do so. Co-founder Aditya says that their business is growing rapidly and the company has already written over 2500 handwritten letters.

No prizes for guessing! Yes, most of the letters are love letters.

The handwritten letter writing niche been embraced by the startup culture with a few other startups like Lettermail and Callyally also providing the service.

The letters are not limited to a particular language. You can get letters written languages like English, Hindi, Marathi, and Telugu. The fee charged for writing one letter is Rs 99.

Their founders say that people send emails, Facebook and WhatsApp messages which are lacking in emotions since they are not able to express their feelings in an apt manner. "Typing a message is a mechanical process. People are realizing that and they want us to deliver deeply felt handwritten messages on their behalf to their near and dear ones," says Anubhav. "We want to turn handwritten letters into a lifestyle product and enable people to send letters the way they send flowers and cakes to wish their loved ones. They do not necessarily bake the cake they send."

The founder of Letteramail, Sumanyu Verma, added his views on the same note. "In this digital age, all conversation happens on screen, but when you write a message with pen on paper, you think and come up with beautiful ideas and emotions. The recipient feels that you actually care," says Verma, 27, who co-founded the company with his friends. "Emails are deleted or junked, but a lot of people like to keep the handwritten letters," he says.

If you want to get a letter written you need to send them a mail and they will handwrite the letter and send it to whoever you wish. "We can help when clients know what to say but are out of words, but we avoid telling them what to say," says Verma. "Seventy percent of the letters we write are personal."

On the other hand,Anubhav says his company helps the clients with the content."At times, the brief we receive is open-ended, and we have the freedom to write whatever we want," he says. "We try everything to make the letter appealing. But we seek the approval of our client before it is sent out."

Anubhav says that writing personal letters is very challenging but are worth the effort since they create an impact.

Though one has to be very careful about the content, you feel good when the letter has resolved the differences between two people," he says. Recently, he wrote a letter for a young man whose girlfriend had not been taking his calls, replying to his Facebook and WhatsApp messages for six months. "The boy emailed us the note with some background on what went wrong. We penned an emotional letter, ending it with the hope that she would reply. And his girlfriend did reply," said Anubhav. His company has a team of in-house and freelance writers who can empathize with the clients. "Most of our love letters are from boys to their girlfriends. We also hire professional calligraphers to write beautiful letters," says Prahlad Singh, a software professional, who founded Callyally.When asked why would someone outsource their personal letters "We all like to handwrite and receive letters from our near and dear ones. But these days people do not have time to write, buy stationery and post letters.