{"id":13400,"date":"2014-03-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/03\/20\/india-s-spiritual-and-religious-market-is-estimated-to-be-over-us30-billion\/"},"modified":"2014-03-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T12:00:00","slug":"india-s-spiritual-and-religious-market-is-estimated-to-be-over-us30-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/03\/20\/india-s-spiritual-and-religious-market-is-estimated-to-be-over-us30-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"India&#8217;s Spiritual And Religious Market Is Estimated To Be Over US$30 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/india\/Indias-spiritual-and-religious-market-is-estimated-to-be-over-30-billion\/articleshow\/30881651.cms\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BANGALORE, INDIA, March 19, 2012 (Times Of India): Interest in India&#8217;s spiritual and religious market is now spawning a whole variety of startups and online ventures. And many are taking advantage of the market&#8217;s fragmentation and low technology penetration. <\/p>\n<p>Goonjan Mall, founder of Online Prasad, not only now brings you prasad from different temples, but has also launched a first-of-its-kind private label brand, Zevotion, of hand-picked Rudraksha beads and yantras, connecting people to their faith. &#8220;Our research showed that about 80% of religious products sold in the country is counterfeit. Zevotion offers certified products assuring customers true value for their money,&#8221; said Mall, who quit his job as a senior analyst in consulting firm Bain &#038; Co to launch Onlineprasad.com. <\/p>\n<p>Serial entrepreneur K. Ganesh, who picked up 35% stake in Onlineprasad.com, said that with 1.2 billion people and 330 million Gods and Goddesses in India, faith was price inelastic. &#8220;Devotees don&#8217;t take a decision to make a pilgrimage or visit a temple based on price,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>Ganesh said the country&#8217;s top 20 temples, including Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam and Vaishno Devi, collect US$816 million as donations annually, while 500 mid-sized temples collect $3.3 billion in donations every year. &#8220;There are another hundred thousand small temples and one million roadside temples collecting between $8 billion and $16 billion as donations each year,&#8221; he said. That&#8217;s a phenomenal market that startups can disrupt with technology, and in some ways bring God closer to people. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source BANGALORE, INDIA, March 19, 2012 (Times Of India): Interest in India&#8217;s spiritual and religious market is now spawning a,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}