Home delivering Lord Ganesha — startups capitalise on Ganesh Chaturthi fever

While devotees across the country are ardently waiting to welcome Lord Ganesha on September 5, business minds from both large organisations and startups too are counting the days, eager to capitalise upon the sentiment of the occasion and add a few numbers in their balance sheets.

Chennai-based e-commerce marketplace Oyethere.com has come up with the idea of delivering clay idols of Lord Ganesha to consumers’ doorsteps between 1 pm and 9 pm on September 3 and 4. Moreover, the idols will be picked up from their houses after five days for immersion in the Bay of Bengal.

They have started the campaign today and will deliver idols only in Chennai. The startup enables customers to place orders on both the website and mobile apps (Android and iOS) and get them delivered in 30-300 minutes from the time of ordering.

Founder of Oyethere.com, S. Shriram said,

We are 11 months old now and have been serving customers with our unique offering. We believe home delivery of Ganesha idols is the way to go for hyperlocal startups like us and not just vegetables or grocery. We believe this facility will bring a lot of convenience to consumers in terms of the time, money, and effort saved in shopping for a simple thing like a Ganesha idol.

To meet the orders, Oyethere has tied up with one supermarket and one Ganesha idol vendor. Shriram mentioned that customers can pay in both cash and using credit/debit cards for which they have partnered with HDFC Bank. The transaction will be made by an EDC machine powered by HDFC Bank. In the coming weeks, the startup is likely to deliver Golu dolls followed by Sundal during Navratri.

Having started operations in October 2015,Oyethere claimed to have served hundreds of customers in south Chennai with over 2,900 products listed in the platform. Currently bootstrapped, the company plans to expand all across Chennai by March 2017 and cover the top 100 cities in India by 2018–19.

The trading game around Ganesh Chaturthis

Taiwanese giant ASUS recently conducted a 'More with Morya' contest, allowing consumers to win ASUS ZenPowers worth Rs 2,500. According to PTI, customers can receive Goibibo vouchers worth Rs 3,000.

When it comes to recipes for this special occasion, what could be better than offering Bappa varieties of modak? Three Mumbai-based home chefs — Archana Arte, Preetha Srinivasan, and Roopa Nabar — held an exhibition of regional desserts, including the making of three kinds of modak, on September 1, as reported by India Today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his monthly radio programme “Mann ki Baat” urged people to celebrate the occasion in an eco-friendly manner by using clay to make the idol. Artists in various parts of the country have taken the initiative to make eco-friendly idols which will easily dissolve in water.

Among them are a group of differently-abled women and children of Mumbai-based Om Creations Trust which assists differently-abled and physically challenged women in learning painting, sculpting, baking, cooking, chocolate-making, gift-packing, and other varied arts. According to a report, 60 members of the organisation are currently working on producing 75 Ganesha idols.