Click and pray

The Internet is no less than a genie that helps perform tasks at the click of a button. Be it ordering food, booking movie tickets, getting household chores done or even healthcare services — everything is now accessible online. But imagine getting to perform a puja at a temple of your choice without having to stand in serpentine queues, and get the prasad delivered at your doorstep, or booking an astrologer/pandit to perform customised pujas? You might raise your eyebrows, but a few e-commerce websites are making all this, and much more, possible.

Enter services like SuperPandit, Shubhpuja and Online Prasad, which have harnessed the wide reach of the Internet to help devotees connect with the divine in a few simple steps.

“The main idea is to help people connect with their faith easily using technology,” says Goonjan Mall, founder, Online Prasad, which offers religious services like home delivery of prasad from 50 temples including Golden Temple, Siddhi Vinayak, Maa Vaishno Devi, Dakshineshwar Kali, and even travel services like darshan booking, accommodation, assistance and local spiritual experiences, among others.

Started in 2012, the idea struck Mall, a graduate from BITS Pilani, when he was at a temple. “Stroke of luck, honestly. I was at the Karni Mata (rat) temple, and, the idea just hit me. We have pandits and employees at temple locations who fulfil client request. We also have tie-up with domestic/international courier providers who help us with the shipping,” he tells Metrolife.

A similar initiative, Shubhpuja claims to be the only religious e-commerce platform that specialises in offering customised puja packages (festival, wedding, antim sanskar pujas, paatha, japs and kathas, grah pravesh and mundan) and astrological services to individuals and corporates who do not have adequate contacts or time to organise pujas themselves.

“We help our devotees organise religious ceremonies in a hassle-free manner by offering complete puja samagri kit, free mahurat consultation, special gift items, and fixed flat rates at a convenient location. The company has a policy to get into puja detail and explain the shlokas/mantras making it easy to understand for more people to participate. While conducting the puja, our pandits give background details on how and why the puja is conducted,” says Saumya Vardhan, founder.

She explains that devotees can book a puja through phone or their website. “As soon as the request is placed, a confirmation mail and message is sent to the customers. Phone calls are also made on our end to confirm the exact requirement of the customer. The desired package or other items are added to the cart. The customer can make a payment on our site to confirm the booking. The puja requirements are sent to our puja centres. Shubhpuja operator verifies customer details and puja process is customised as per their requirements.

Sankalp is taken followed by puja and on completion, prasad is sent to the devotee,” she says. But what about the authenticity of the entire process? “Each temple has a unique prasad type — which cannot be duplicated. Also, clients have the ability to track the prasad from the temple source to their home via web/SMS,” Mall says.

Adding, Ashutosh Tiwari, the brainchild behind SuperPandit which was launched in June 2014, says that his venture enrolls pandits from Sanskrit Vidyalaya in Mumbai, Varanasi, Nasik and Nagpur. “We enrol pujaris who have degree in Sanskrit/Karmkand/astrology as Shastri or Acharya. We have a criterion to select pujari and then we create their profile on our website which displays their name, age, qualification, experience and expertise,” he adds.

He says that panditji are generally booked for Satyanarayan katha, marriage, Ganesha Chaturthi and griha pravesh. “My father is a priest and I have experienced the pros and cons of being the child of a pandit. Yes, we used to get sweets and prasad whenever there was a puja, but the problem was that out of 365 days, only 150 have a mahurat to perform puja. With this experience, during a casual discussion with my father, it clicked me that this industry is completely unorganised. Hence, I came up with SuperPandit where you can book qualified panditjis and astrologers with complete accountability,” he says.