For generations, bringing Bappa home meant stepping out. There was the trip to the idol-maker, the search for the right murti, flowers picked up on the way, last-minute puja supplies bought from the neighbourhood shop and, for many devotees, a final visit to the temple that completed the ritual. Over the past two years, some of those journeys are beginning to look very different. A few taps can now bring home the idol, the flowers, the camphor and even the modaks. And this year, the digital basket has stretched further, with prasad from Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Temple and Pune’s Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati Temple also finding a place on delivery platforms.
These stats from Swiggy Instamart offer a glimpse into how this behaviour is taking shape. Demand for eco-friendly clay Ganpatis grew 176 per cent year-on-year, making them the fastest-growing category during the festival. Mawa modaks grew 145 per cent, while flowers peaked at 868 orders a minute at 7:42 am on Ganesh Chaturthi.
But these numbers mean more than what people are buying. Delivery platforms are now finding a place in several parts of the celebration, raising a larger question about how convenience fits into a festival traditionally rooted in physical, shared experiences.
From festive shopping to festive infrastructure
For Ashok Lalla, an Independent Brand and Digital advisor, this is part of a broader expansion of what quick commerce can offer during festivals. “Quick commerce platforms offer convenience and choice and have used not just Ganesh Chaturthi but all festive and religious occasions as tentpoles for creating new and growing revenue streams for themselves,” he says.
That expansion is visible in the range of products now available. Idols, puja essentials, flowers, leaves, modaks and home décor are being offered across platforms, while products associated with specific temples are opening another avenue altogether.
“Q-commerce sites have become an important, additional distribution channel for these temples, and are also a convenient point of discovery and purchase for their large customer bases,” Lalla adds.
Independent Consumer Consultant Akshay D’souza sees this as part of the emergence of what he calls ‘spiritual commerce’. He shares, “The festival is emerging as an important test case for spiritual commerce, and it could help create a whole new product vertical within these platforms to drive usage and offer an experience that is a mix of convenience, affordability and devotion to its consumers.”
The scale is not confined to cities traditionally associated with the festival either. Instamart recorded a 1,718 per cent rise in eco-Ganpati orders in Delhi, followed by Kolkata at 1,305 per cent, Noida at 1,136 per cent and Bhubaneswar at 1,132 per cent. Ready-to-place clay idols accounted for 90 per cent of demand, while paint-your-own eco idols accounted for the rest.
The neighbourhood shop is still part of the picture
Yet, a delivery app appearing in the festive ritual does not mean the neighbourhood market has disappeared. “Almost every street in cities and towns of India has a variety of formal and informal (temporary, streetside) retailers who continue to sell products related to festivals, and consumers continue to gather around them as well. So, both quick commerce and traditional retailing continue to co-exist in the space of festive shopping,” Lalla notes.
Harish Bijoor, Business and Brand-Strategy Specialist and Founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., takes a more pointed view of the impact on physical retail. “Q-commerce is a hungry business. It wants to eat into every piece of the business pie that exists,” he says. According to Bijoor, the platforms are effectively bringing elements of the pandal experience to consumers at home. “The logic of Q-commerce seems to be that if you can’t go to the pandal, the pandal will come to you.” He estimates that at least ‘15 per cent of the business that every Quick Commerce company gets out of Ganpati’ could represent business lost by local retailers.
Convenience must know where to stop
However, for agencies working with brands in the category, the opportunity is less about replacing tradition and more about fitting into it.
Jyoti Chugh Bhatia, Group Director, Gozoop Creative, points out that Ganesh Chaturthi has a particularly intimate quality. “What makes Ganesh Chaturthi different is that it’s not just a festival you participate in; it’s one you bring home,” she says.
That distinction also changes the role of speed in festive communication. “Nobody is celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi because something arrived in 10 minutes,” Bhatia says. “The emotion is in bringing Bappa home, doing the rituals, having family around and getting your home ready.”
Toru Jhaveri, Founder and Strategy Lead, The Stuff of Life, sees another reason to why the category works. “Quick Commerce is very much part of the infrastructure of daily life and festive life; it takes a lot of the stress and urgency out of having to account for dozens of details in advance, and allows for more flexibility and spontaneity in celebrations,” she says.
The more interesting development, Jhaveri adds, may not even be the advertising around Ganpati, but how platforms organise the entire festival on their apps. “Your entire to-do list lives on the apps and probably includes items you would have otherwise forgotten. That’s exactly the kind of relevance that brands should aim for.”
For quick commerce, Ganesh Chaturthi is becoming another occasion where the convenience of delivery meets an established habit of buying locally. With idols, puja essentials, modaks and now temple prasad available online, the festival is giving these platforms more reasons to be part of the consumer’s festive routine.
