Temple gold turns a glittering business

Temples across the country are increasingly using gold collections to beautify their structures. Such is the spurt in business volumes that Smart Creation, a company specialising in gold-plating of temples, predicts a doubling of revenue every year for the coming five years.

“Since 2014, our temple business has doubled. Of late, people in their early 40s are involved in managing temple affairs. Even youngsters of 26-27 years are also showing interest in it,” said Pankaj Bhandari, proprietor at Smart Creation.

“We expect revenue from the business to double every year for the next five years. Either we will have more customers or the ticket size of the projects will go up,” he added.

Currently, Smart Creation gold plates 25 temples a month. They are mostly located in Andra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. “We are also active in Karnataka and Kerala now. We recently did a project for the Hare Krishna Movement in Ahmedabad. We are also doing projects in Delhi,” Bhandari said.

In the international market, Smart Creation has worked on one Guruvayurappan Temple in New Jersey.

The average ticket size is ₹2-3 lakh. “Generally, the temple kalash, vimanam, Swami kavach, golden chariots, mandapams and vahanams are gold plated,” he said.

Smart Creation has been in the business since 1998. “We got more active in 2007-08 when we took up the first project for around 3 kg of gold. From there, we have done close to 3,500 temples,” Bhandari said.

Through his new venture, Mantra Gold Coatings, Bhandari is now looking at gold-plated home décor products. The average ticket size in puja rooms and home décor is around ₹1-1.25 lakh.

He said, “We give the split between the price of gold and the cost of works. The client procures the gold. In the temple business, the clients collect the gold from devotees. We take the making charges,” Bhandari said.