Temple Connect: Bridging The Gap Between Temple And Devotees
With the aim of bridging the gap between temple and devotees and introducing spiritual India to the western world Giresh Kulkarni, Founder of Temple Connect talks about this unique experience in this exclusive conversation with BW Applause and Everything Experiential. Here are some edited excerpts
1. Why do you feel necessary to bridge the gap between temples and devotees?
In India, there are 265 to 270 top temples that have an extremely heavy follower base like Mata Vaishnodevi Shrine, Siddhivinayak Mumbai, Tirupati Balaji Temple, and The Golden Temple which can be considered the Maha Kumbh of faith. Similarly, there are a lot of important temples followed by their followers at local and regional levels which gets missed out on the media mileage. There are few known temples in India and there is no real-time data or information available about them.
Temple Connect believes – Firstly it is needed to get seekers closer to the deity with the engagement of unknown temples, then encouraging temple tourism by introducing unknown temples in the heritage locations of the country and after that helping those devotees get access to such divine temples and this is the true essence of bridging the gap. Also, with the advent of Technology, Temple Connect will be able to drive real-time updates which are more than a social networking platform.
2. With Temple Connect you aim to connect the western world to India, what is the motivation behind it?
India is the land of Culture, Traditions, Rituals and above all Devotion. It is considered the oldest civilisation with great History of Ramayana, Mahabharata, and more. This truly needs to be presented to the world in the most consumable patterns in different ways. Someone has to pick this though and grow the cause - which I have been doing for over 18 years in a detailed format to spread the rich wealth of Indian Heritage to the Globe.
3. You founded Temple Connect in 2016, what are the successes you gained in the last 6 to 7 years?
Temple Connect was created to build a strong network of Temples in different nations with roots in the Indian subcontinent. Temple Connect has reached over 9664 temples, it includes Dharmashala, Anna Kshetras and Temple Centric Organisations and Associations like Ved Pathshala & Pujari or Pujan Vidhi nambodaris in Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism with 56 Nations worldwide. We have over 1.8 million followers on the social network with a reach of over 68.4 million visitors a month. Also, we are creating very informative content for seekers in different languages.
4. What challenges you faced while finding the investors and usually what are investors think about the idea of Temple Connect?
In this land of Devotion & spirituality, people are strongly interested to visit and explore religious places, but corporates still shy away from working in this segment. The investor community needs to truly look into it with an open mind and help in promoting the content for devotees and tourists.
5. How you gathered the data of thousands of temples from across India and across the world?
There is a say that there is no option to hard work, and that's the true way of connecting with temples the world over, communicating with the management, The key influencers in the temple towns, the bureaucracy of the nation, and Endowment Boards to name a few who have helped us reach this number of connects. I personally have visited a sizeable number of temples in India and internationally which helped me create this impact of Temple Connect to a larger extend.
