Devotion, run as an economy

The economy already exists. It is the one that runs around a temple town, priests and poojaris, artisans, flower sellers, guides, drivers, satvik kitchens, homestays, and it runs mostly on cash and word of mouth. It is local enterprise, employment and tourism that nobody accounts for as an economy. A marketplace on top of it would be the easy half. The work is making the livelihood in it steady and visible, and most of that livelihood is carried by women.

Half the experience happens in a physical place, on a date the calendar picks rather than one the devotee picked, and no amount of software moves either. So the software has to meet it where it is. Book the slot, arrange the bed near the temple, get the family there, then get out of the way.

Trust is the hardest of the three and it is what a devotee is actually paying for. The question behind every booking is whether the ritual will be performed properly, by someone qualified to perform it, on the right date, and whether the offering reached the deity.

One thing follows from that and it is easy to miss. The supply is Indian and stays Indian: the temples, the pandits, the circuits, the company itself. The demand is not. The company writes it as being for Bharat and for home away from home, a college student, a grandparent, a family settled abroad, and the sharpest case is the one where somebody living overseas sponsors a puja in their own name at a temple they cannot reach, arranges a darshan for relatives back home, and has the prasad sent on to them. Everything about verification and settlement matters more, not less, when the person paying will never see the temple. Four faiths are honoured, and the Jain tirths and Buddhist sites among them are an international circuit in their own right; the company says its yatra circuits run beyond India as well, into Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Nor does everyone arrive through religion. Meditation, yoga, wellness and Ayurveda are a way in of their own, for people who would not describe themselves as devout and who still want the practice done properly. The catalogue has to hold that as carefully as it holds a shraadh date, and in fifteen or more Indian languages either way.

A pandit paid six weeks late does not complain. He stops answering. The devotee who asked for him is told he is unavailable, and nobody involved ever learns that the reason was a payment.

So the ledger is written at the booking, not at the end of a quarter: a line for each partner owed, closed on a date they can plan their month around. A driver in Haridwar who knows Tuesday means Tuesday will take the next booking. One who has been told twice will take somebody else's.

The difficulty is not the first payout. It is the ten thousandth, to people who bank in a town where cash still settles most things, in a week when a festival triples the volume.

DIVVIB Lifestyle Private Limited was incorporated in Gurugram in 2024 and trades as DharmikVibes. It is recognised as a startup by the Government of India under DPIIT. Operations began in August 2025. I joined as Co-Founder in September 2026, and I am building it now.

Trust here does not transfer. A family will not accept a pandit because an app rates him five stars; they accept him because someone they respect vouches for him, or because the temple does. So verification cannot be a badge on a profile. It has to be the kind of thing an elder in the family would accept if he asked how we knew.

And the calendar decides demand, not the customer. The dates were fixed centuries ago and everyone wants the same morning. A system built for steady traffic breaks on Mahashivratri; one built for Mahashivratri is idle in between and has to earn its keep the rest of the year. Both of those are why the market has stayed open: they punish a light entry, and they reward staying.

AI earns its place quietly in that. Reading a request in the language it was written in. Matching a ritual to a practitioner who actually performs it. Taking the paperwork off a pandit who would rather not do paperwork. What it is not is a chatbot standing between a person and their faith, and nothing we ship puts one there.