Puja essentials to push up ecom sales this festival season
Big online retailers are set to make puja item shopping much less painful for customers, and are eyeing up to 100% sales growth in the category this year.
Diyas, rangolis, havan kunds, cow dung cakes and even cow urine — these are some of the best-sellers for e-tailers this festival season.
Big online retailers are set to make puja item shopping much less painful for customers, and are eyeing up to 100% sales growth in the category this year.
Everything is up for sale. God idols, puja thalis, puja asana, agarbattis and Gangajal — you can order anything at the click of your mouse.
“Buying puja items is more of an urban and semi-urban phenomena as it is tough to find well-equipped puja shops in urban markets easily. We usually see customers in the age bracket of 25 to 35, mostly from nuclear families, shopping for puja items online,” said Nitin Kochhar, vice-president, categories, ShopClues.
So, a packet of 600 gram of cow dung cake can be purchased at a starting price of ₹50. A 250 ml Gangajal bottle will cost you around ₹120.
Discount on Gangajal in some platforms are as high as 63%.
All of these come with the option of cash on delivery. One can also avail additional 5% to 10% discount through credit card and debit card purchases.
More than 100 merchants sold cow dung cakes on ShopClues last year, with 100 to 200 pieces being sold in a day. The e-tailer is planning to sell cow urine this year.
“At ShopClues, puja needs as a category had reached close to ₹1-crore topline (industry jargon for revenue) last year. This year we are expecting over 100% growth in the category,” says Kochhar.
Snapdeal has a collection of close to 10,000 products in the religion and spirituality category this year. “During the festival season, especially Navartri, we expect an exponential growth in our sales volume, nearly four times of the current monthly average,” says Saurabh Bansal, vice-president, category management, Snapdeal.
The company has witnessed a 250% sales growth in the puja item category in 2015-16, compared to a 200% increase in 2014-2015, the spokesperson said.
Amazon, too, is expecting a strong growth in demand in the puja item category, especially during Diwali. In the last one year, it recorded a sales growth of 350% in the segment. “Last year, the puja category grew four times compared to 2014. This year, we expect continued momentum over the next few weeks of the festival season. Last year, 750 sellers had listed their offerings in the category. That number has now grown to over 1,800 this year,” the company spokesperson said.
Flipkart, which has Lakshmi and Ganesha idols among its top-selling products, has introduced a new range of idols this year. Ready-to-light ghee diyas, which saves one from the conventional hassle of dipping cotton wicks into ghee, light rangolis and assorted thalis are some of the innovative puja items on its platform.
Puja samagri is a rapidly growing category in India. The agarbatti (incense stick) market alone accounts for around ₹4,000 crore of the ₹10,000crore market. Besides ITC’s Mangaldeep, other significant players include Cycle (from Mysore-based NR Group) and Mysore Deep. The latest entrant is Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda under the Aastha brand.