Why faith and devotion is one of India’s biggest online business opportunities

When people talk about big online markets in India, they usually mean fashion, electronics, food delivery or gaming. Faith rarely makes the list. That is a mistake, and it is the reason the opportunity is still open.

Devotion in India is not a niche or a hobby. It is daily, it is personal, it is lifelong, and it is already tied to real spending: on travel, on festivals, on rituals and on the objects people bring into their homes. What has changed in the last few years is that the people doing all of this are now online, paying digitally, and discovering things on their phones. The businesses serving them mostly are not.

This guide lays out the numbers, with sources, so you can judge the opportunity for yourself.

The size of the audience

India’s last census counted 121 crore people, of whom 96.6 crore (79.8%) were Hindu, 17.2 crore Muslim, 2.8 crore Christian, 2.1 crore Sikh, and about 1.3 crore Buddhist and Jain together ⁴. No newer official religion count exists yet, and the population has grown by more than 25 crore since.

Numbers alone do not make a market. Belief does, and here India is remarkable. Pew Research Center interviewed nearly 30,000 adults across the country and found:

97%

of Indians believe in God ¹

84%

say religion is very important in their lives ²

81%

keep a shrine, altar or religious symbol at home ²

57%

of Hindus perform puja every day ³

Read those again. This is not a segment of the population. It is almost the whole population, and it holds across age, region and income. Most markets have to create a habit. This one is a habit, practised every morning, in almost every home.

Devotion is already one of India’s biggest reasons to spend

Belief turns into spending all the time. The clearest official evidence comes from travel. In India’s newest national tourism survey, released by the Ministry of Statistics in September 2026, pilgrimage and religious purposes were the single biggest reason people made an overnight trip: 48% of all such trips, ahead of every other purpose in both rural and urban India ⁵.

48%

of domestic overnight trips are for pilgrimage or religious purposes (NSO, 2025-26) ⁵

66 crore

people visited the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj over 45 days in 2025 ⁶

94.8 lakh

pilgrims visited Mata Vaishno Devi in 2024 alone ⁷

Festivals tell the same story. The Confederation of All India Traders estimated Diwali 2025 trade at ₹6.05 lakh crore, up about 25% on the year before, from its survey of traders in 60 cities ⁸. It is a trade estimate rather than an official statistic, but even allowing for that, one festival moves a sum larger than many entire industries. And Diwali is one festival out of a calendar that includes Navratri, Durga Puja, Ganesh Chaturthi, Janmashtami, Maha Shivratri, Ram Navami, Onam, Pongal, Chhath and dozens of regional celebrations.

Even single devotional product categories are large. India’s incense stick industry alone is estimated at around ₹8,000 crore at retail ⁹.

The devotee is now online

A decade ago, reaching this audience meant shops, temple markets and distributors. That has changed faster than most people realise.

95.8 crore

active internet users in India in 2025 ¹⁰

57%

of them live in rural India, where growth is fastest ¹⁰

98%

of internet users consume content in Indian languages ¹¹

This matters for faith in particular. The newest internet users are disproportionately from small towns and villages, they prefer their own language, and they are often more traditional in practice than the urban users who came online first. The next hundred million online customers in India are, overwhelmingly, devotional customers.

The proof: people already pay for faith online

You do not have to guess whether devotees will spend online. They already do, and investors have noticed.

• Sri Mandir, a devotion app run by AppsForBharat, raised ₹175 crore in 2025 in a round led by Susquehanna. The company reports over 4 crore downloads, and says 12 lakh people booked more than 52 lakh rituals at temples through the app in a single year, with about a fifth of demand coming from Indians abroad ¹².
• Astrotalk, an online astrology platform, reported operating revenue of about ₹1,176 crore for FY25, nearly double the year before ¹³.
• Newer faith-tech companies such as Utsav and Vama have also raised venture funding to build temple, ritual and devotional-content services ^14,15.

These companies serve rituals, prayers and guidance. That tells you the willingness to pay is real, and that trust can be earned online. It also shows how much of the market is still untouched: the objects of devotion that people live with every day.

The void: huge demand, a fragmented and dated supply

Here is the part most people miss. Despite everything above, the way devotional products reach people has barely changed. CAIT estimates that about 85% of Diwali 2025 trade went through traditional and non-corporate markets rather than organised retail ⁸. Walk through any online marketplace and you see the same thing: thousands of near-identical listings, the same few stock images reused by hundreds of sellers, uncertain quality, and almost no brands a buyer would recognise or trust.

Look at it from the devotee’s side and the gaps are obvious:

• Quality and reverence. People want something worthy of the place it will occupy, not the cheapest printout of a calendar image.
• Personal meaning. A family deity, a regional form of the Goddess, a name, a date, a blessing for a new home. Mass production cannot serve a billion personal devotions.
• Modern homes. Younger families want devotional pieces that fit contemporary interiors, and there is very little made with that in mind.
• Language and region. India does not worship in one language or one tradition. Most products still speak to one idea of a devotee.
• Gifting. Housewarmings, weddings and festivals create constant demand for devotional gifts, and very few options feel special.
• Trust. Buyers are wary of poor quality, wrong depictions and sellers who disappear. A brand that is careful and respectful stands out immediately.
• The diaspora. Millions of Indians abroad want the same things and have almost no good way to get them.

Why now

Three changes have made it possible for a small team, or even one person, to serve this market properly:

• Customers are reachable. With nearly 96 crore people online and short video and social feeds now the main way people discover things, a devotional product can find its audience without a shop or a distributor ¹⁰.
• Payment is no longer a barrier. Between digital payments and cash on delivery, a buyer in a small town can order as easily as one in a metro.
• Made-to-order production has matured. Across India there are now manufacturers who produce, pack and ship a single item only after it is ordered. That means no warehouse, no unsold stock and no large upfront investment, and a catalogue can be as personal as the customer wants.

Put those together and the old reasons this market stayed fragmented, the cost of stock, reach and distribution, largely disappear.

Right now: Durga Puja and the festive season

If you want to see this opportunity at its peak, look at the next few weeks. Durga Puja in Kolkata is recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity ¹⁶. A British Council study valued the creative economy around Durga Puja in West Bengal alone at ₹32,377 crore in 2019 ¹⁷, and in 2025 the state government funded more than 45,000 community puja committees ¹⁸. That is one festival, in one region, before Navratri, Dussehra, Lakshmi Puja and Diwali follow straight after it.

In 2026, Durga Puja runs from Shashthi on 17 October to Vijaya Dashami on 21 October, and Diwali falls on 8 November. For anyone starting a devotional business, this season is when demand, gifting and attention are at their highest, and the second and third guides show exactly how to be ready for it.

A word on responsibility

Faith is not just a market, and the businesses that last in it will be the ones that never forget that. Customers can tell the difference between a seller who respects what a deity means to them and one who sees only a keyword. Accurate iconography, honest descriptions, fair prices and real care in how things are made are not only right, they are the whole competitive advantage in a market full of careless sellers.

What comes next

The opportunity is simple to state: an audience of close to a billion people with a daily practice, a calendar that renews demand every year, a population that has just come online, and a supply side that has not caught up.

The next guide is the exact step-by-step guide for each step: targeting the right niche, creating your brand and products, setting up your store and Qikink, building your Facebook and Instagram, and running the marketing and promotion that gets your first sales. The third shows exactly what to post and which ads to run, with a Durga Puja 2026 plan.