Is India ready for a branded player in the $40 billion religion & spirituality market?
Now, startups like www.dailypoojaseva.com provide services ranging from arranging a puja and pandit, besides offering consultations in Homams, Poojas and supply of pooja flowers.
Remember that guy from your group who would set up a small mandir (temple) in his house just a week before the final exams? Or that aunt from the neighbourhood who biennially distributed prasad (devotional offerings mostly in the form of a food item), singing, “Pappu paas ho gaya!” Helping with academics isn’t the only use-case for God though.After the #BigFatIndianWeddings, if there’s anything else we unquestionably (and unquestioningly) spend on, it’s religion and spirituality.
In such a scenario, it was a no-brainer for an entrepreneur or three to spread their wings in this direction as well. Startups (like www.dailypoojaseva.com) provide services ranging from arranging a puja and pandit, besides offering consultations in Homams, Poojas and arranging Pooja Samagiris and Pooja flowers. As the name suggests, saves you the bother of standing in queues for pooja or prasad, with segmentation by geography and deity.
In this slew of services, there’s an established ecommerce player for all things religious and spiritual: Daily Pooja Seva (DPS). Founded in 2016, DPS is both an online as well as an offline player that sells products across 18 sub categories; and around 200 puja items and merchandise via modern retail stores.
DPS was launched by Mrs. Bhavani Narasimhan Managing Director of the Sri Kalpatharu Sons & Culturals Pvt. Ltd that has businesses across food & wellness, among others. For starters, it is the only branded player for this segment with such a wide offering, especially in a market hugely dominated by unorganised players barring a it comes to a few players.
Why do you need a branded product-line for this category though? “Well, people veer towards branded things in any category,” says Samyuktha CEO -SKSCPL”Branding brings consistency in product and packaging. It builds trust. The consumer will always be careful with unbranded products, but she assumes a certain standard from a branded one. And that’s the reason people have increasingly started buying pooja oils and materials from our stores rather than off roadside
Questions abound about DPS and its model: Why opt for a standalone site instead of being a section across various already well established ecommerce portals? Is the offering something that is unavailable online? What is the value add?
Mrs. Bhavani answers all our queries: “We are focused on religion and spirituality. So, while this will be a sub-sub-sub category within www.dailypoojaseva.com where you’ll have about numerous products and services like Nakshtra Seva, Navargraha Seva, we offer you close to a good no. of products with more than just the basic product. Our teams are better equipped to guide you through your purchase.”As a consumer, Buma Shivakumar COO of SKSCPL also prefers specialist sites for this segment. “Lot more possibilities of segmentation and customisation there,” he says. There’s good scope for a branded chain in the religion and spirituality segment, Ms.Buma says, provided the player can cater to the sub-segments across and spiritual sects in the country. No one size/product fits all, even when l things God. Let’s see how well DPS takes that into consideration.