As the Kumbh Mela rumbles to a close this year, everyone is in grip of FOMO—fear of missing out—induced by influencers covering the fair. I, too, appeared on a podcast to talk about the spiritual significance of this 12-yearly mela and my experience of spending time at an earlier Kumbh. We spoke about the use of artificial intelligence and radio-frequency technologies this time of digital spirituality.
Soon, all my screens were buzzing with ads of different apps promising a hassle-free trip to Prayagraj and luxury tent accommodations; some even assured home delivery of Ganga water from the Sangam in case I was unable to make it. This sent me looking at the digital landscape of spirituality players. Some investor reports claim this space to be even bigger than food delivery, and I would agree, having studied pilgrimage places and pilgrim behaviour. The market has so many elements, most of them unorganised. Some 900-odd startups in this space are banking on the young demographic, aiming for a slice of an estimated $60-billion market.
More than a decade ago, in my book The Mouse Charmers, I had classified the digital economy in three categories—commerce, content and community. Let’s evaluate digital spiritual startups on these three parameters.
Spiritual Content
Content is a clear leader. Spiritual content comes in the form of devotional music, discourses, live sessions of gurus and storytellers. In this digital era, spiritual content has always been a chartbuster. Hanuman Chalisa on T Series remains the most viewed video in India. Devotional music channels do extremely well as repeatability is high—people like to listen again and again.
Podcasts also indicate growing appetite for spiritual content. Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita remain among the top podcasts on Spotify. Given that there is such a large corpus of Indian scriptures that are yet to be translated and interpreted for our times, there is no dearth of material available for more in-depth content. IIT Kanpur has taken on the humungous task of putting the original texts in digital formats along with commentaries. They started with the Gita but now have Ramayana, the upanishads, Brahma sutras and works of Shankaracharya. The charm of short-form content brings its own spotlight.
The community aspect is dominated by digital channels of individual gurus and ashrams. Isha Ashram leads here, but many others have a strong presence too. The communities that used to meet in person at ashrams or retreats are now actively engaging on digital platforms for discourses. Many spiritual organisations have launched their own apps and some have even released their own pre-loaded tablets that can help you with guided practices like meditation or mantra sadhana. In-person retreats are also back in vogue, mostly driven by the urge to meet the guru in person.
Commerce for Digital Spirituality
Commerce is gaining momentum by innovating for the needs of Indian religions that are a curious combination of goods and services. On the face of it, it looks like a sale of puja items, which anyway happens through the generic e-commerce platforms. In practice, the world of spiritual practices involves more things. Let’s say, as a new migrant to a big city, you want to do a griha pravesh puja before you move in.
You need someone to guide you on what kind of puja is right for you, the right time and what all do you need. Traditionally, a neighbourhood pandit would do this. It’s not easy to find one in new surroundings. So, we see so many apps to find a pandit or book a puja for a fee. The upside is that you will find what you need; the downside is that you would never know the authenticity. Quality, as of now, seems to be a big question mark. However, most platforms thrive on the fact that most consumers have near-zero knowledge of the rituals and mantras.
Online pujas and live darshans are the biggest space covered in the last couple of years. NRIs make for the primary audience—a case of a perfect win-win. They can get a puja performed for a small cost. The challenge here is to have a collaborative network with large, prominent temples. In the future, temples may choose to collaborate with one or two platforms for digital access to their daily rituals. So, an app’s success would depend on these networks as well as trust-building.
Digital Mandir
One app even enables you to create your own temple on your mobile phone. You can offer all your pujas in this virtual temple that is always with you. The good part is that you can set reminders for your puja schedules. The downside—I hate to see the same mobile taken to washrooms or being touched with dirty hands.
Then there are sub-domains like astrology, which are probably the biggest success story in the technology-led spirituality space. It still has a lot of untapped potential. Then is also pilgrimage management, that has a lot of scope for innovation to cater to specific needs for pilgrims that are different from other tourists.
As our shastras would say, everything should adapt as per desh, kaal and paristhiti (space, time and circumstances). So does the medium for our spiritual pursuits.
First published in The New Indian Express on 16-FEB-2025.
