Disrupting the Temple Industrial Complex
Earlier this year, I packed up my life in Silicon Valley and moved to India to work with early-stage technology companies. It’s an interesting time for the Indian startup scene, with the emergence of domestic players across several consumer sectors. To that end, I started working at Investopad, where much of what I do is assess startups with India-centric business models.
In particular, I explore the opportunities that technology startups have to solve local problems. This means moving beyond X for India businesses or adapting foreign models for Indian contexts, and instead digging deep into the nuances and specific needs of the Indian consumer.
Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of this consumer market is the over-commercialization of religion in India. Hinduism itself is perhaps one of India’s strongest and most internationally recognized “brands”. Granted, Hinduism isn’t India’s only religion, but it’s certainly our most commercialized. From tourism to branded prasad, the Temple Industrial Complex commands the time and money of a loyal consumer base throughout India and beyond.
The Business of Religion
If capitalized, Indian startups have an immense opportunity to innovate for the religious consumer. The addressable market for such services is estimated over $40 billion. However, much of this opportunity is currently unrealized.
Between transportation, commerce, dating and marriage, digital services have taken over just about every aspect of our lives. So why has religion been left behind?
For starters, the “business of religion” is inherently opaque and difficult to navigate. Many mandirs operate much in the way that traditional businesses do: employing large marketing teams and offering differentiated services to command a loyal clientele. One of India’s most popular mandirs, the Srivari Temple “estimated revenue from offerings at more than Rs. 1,000 crore and Rs. 175 crore from laddu sales.”
However, for an outsider, cracking this market can prove difficult. I recently heard from a startup founder who had spent time building an on-premise CRM for a local temple in Delhi. When the project was completed, the mandir refused to pay him the committed amount and balked at the notion of his asking for money from a temple.
This vein of moral superiority is not confined only to India. Earlier this year, a controversial Amazon service offering on-demand delivery of Buddhist priests in Japan provoked the ire of religious leaders. Similar services do exist in India (Pandit Booking, Book My Pandit, My Pandit G, for starters) and could prove useful for an increasingly urban and secular clientele. I recall a humorous, but not entirely outlandish scene from the Mindy Project, in which Mindy hires a highly-rated priest from Yelp to perform her son’s mundan ceremony in New York.
An Unrealized Opportunity
While Indian religion has done plenty to commoditize itself, many startup founders hesitate to interact with this space out of deference for tradition. A user on Quora — an unexpectedly popular site in India — decried the notion of a religious startup: “To me personally, a religion business sounds like an oxymoron. Doesn’t really make sense ethically.”
Though not a technology company, Patanjali’s success is a testament to the “brand” of traditional Indian spirituality. In the consumer goods space, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali has proven a formidable opponent to established multinationals such as Unilever. Perhaps young startup founders should consider riding these trends and innovating for digital consumer.
The current events around demonetisation have certainly hit temples and their collection boxes, stymieing mandirs’ ability to collect donations. Forced by demonetisation, some mandirs have started moving their donation activity online: “Mumbai’s Shree Siddhivinayak Temple and Gujarat’s Shree Somnath Temple have initiated talks with Paytm to introduce e-wallet facilities.”
If mandirs are beginning to embrace digital currency and expanding their own modes of operating digitally, then why not consider building B2B SaaS catered specifically toward them?
We have app-ified the Bhagavad Gita and created on-demand services for hiring pandits and ordering pooja samagri. But is there a greater opportunity here? Religious organizations could be fundamentally rethinking the ways in which they not only operate, but also appeal to a younger and more tech-savvy demographic. Technological innovation could serve as the driving force to do so.
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If you’re working on a technology startup trying to disrupt the temple industrial complex (or if you’re curious to continue the conversation), feel free to reach out to devanshi [at] investopad.com
