India’s $30 billion religious and spirituality market has taken a plunge into the 21st century with tech companies and startups joining the fun! Take Goonjan Mall for example, who launched Online Prasad, a portal that let’s you buy prasad from 50 temples which will be delivered to your doorsteps. Prasad is a form of blessing that is offered to devotees of a deity. The queues to receive these food offerings are usually very long at Indian temples, and Mall’s website takes away this hassle.
Mall came out with his idea when waiting at the Karni Mata temple in the state of Rajasthan. “The idea that religion must be simplified and technology was the perfect tool came in a flash,” he said. Mall was employed at Bain & Company, which he left to launch his start-up. His website also sells religious objects and scriptural books such as the Vishnu Puran and Garuda Purana.
The website draws 2500 visitors daily and has 120,000 Facebook followers. The site is backed by a number of angel investors and financiers, including GrowthStory.in. “India’s religious market is a huge white space which is migrating to the internet with the changing pace of social lives,” said K Ganesh, founder of Growth Story who, along with his wife Meena have already sold several startups. “Here is a market that is both recession-proof and price inelastic. Unlike other sectors it is not cyclical because people resort to faith in good times and bad times. Also nobody negotiates with God!” he added.
“Religion is the most viral business in India and we are invested not just in terms of money but getting the right product out, setting pricing to service standards and connecting the dots between technology, resources and facilities that enable believers to reach out to their faith,” said Nandini Guglani, co-founder of Morpheus, which invested $10,000 in Mall’s idea.
40 million people in India are expected to engage in e-commerce in 2014, and the religious sector is set to take a piece of this pie.