Pooja by proxy: Thanjavur start-up to tap USD 30 billion devotional biz

It was founded in 2016 by husband-wife duo Ajay V and Aathmika AM, who have a decade long experience in the travel management and services space. Their company is being pitched as a destination for pilgrimage services, heritage tourism and devotional needs such as poojas, homams, prasads. Chandrashekar Kupperi, founder of Anova, is the Head of Strategic Alliance for this venture.

Ajay tells us his stint with companies like MakeMyTrip gave him an insight into hotel contracts. He says, “Only a handful of well-known temples in Tamil Nadu were frequented by pilgrims. There are as many as 247 temples that are over 1,000 years old, but only about 50 see regular footfalls. We turned the focus to lesser known shrines, and open the market to NRIs.”

The company is also trying to make the most of the e-pooja market, a fraction of the $30 bn devotional and spiritual services biz. Ajay, who claims to have held as many as 1,000 e-poojas over the last two years, tells us, “Many people, owing to health or geographical reasons opt for e-homams and poojas. We deliver videos and the prasads from the pooja to these customers. We are also keen on the concierge services, which will take care of the pilgrims’ end to end needs – from air tickets to accommodation.”

Ajay hopes to cover 50 temples in TN and Kerala with his concierge services. The company is also looking at brick and mortar format. “About 4-5 retail outlets, on the franchisee model, will come up in June. The outlets, planned for Kumbakonam, Coimbatore, Chennai and Palakkad, will specialise in devotional items of all kinds,” says Ajay.

It will also introduce VR pooja, as Ajay believes that in two years, the tech will reach critical mass. For now, he has ventured into the Augmented Reality space, offering temple tourism of a different kind which will go live this April. This will involve setting up scan-ready codes in different parts of a temple, which can be read using a cellphone and which will offer interesting trivia.