From an Unorganised Market to a Global Brand: How Gagan Dhawan Is Building ServDharm Around India’s Devotional Economy

For generations, buying pooja samagri in India has largely been a local affair. Families have relied on neighbourhood stores, temple-side vendors and familiar sellers for incense, puja kits, idols and other devotional products. Despite the enormous size of India’s religious economy, the category has remained fragmented, with limited standardisation in sourcing, packaging and quality.

For entrepreneur Gagan Dhawan, this gap presented an opportunity to organise a category where trust matters perhaps more than in most consumer businesses.

As the founder of ServDharm, Dhawan has been working to bring greater consistency, accessibility and organised retail practices to the pooja samagri segment, while attempting to retain the cultural and personal character that defines devotional consumption.

Identifying an Opportunity Hidden in a Traditional Market

India’s spiritual and religious goods economy has been estimated at around ₹2.5 lakh crore annually, while estimates for the pooja samagri and religious products market vary significantly depending on what is included in the category.

Yet size alone was not what shaped Dhawan’s approach.

The larger challenge was that an industry serving millions of households continued to operate predominantly through informal and hyperlocal supply chains. Products could differ considerably in quality, packaging and sourcing depending on where they were purchased.

Dhawan saw the possibility of building a more organised system around this traditional ecosystem.

Through ServDharm, he sought to introduce structured sourcing, quality checks, standardised packaging and wider availability into a category where purchasing decisions had historically depended on familiarity with individual sellers.

Rather than attempting to change religious practices or reinvent traditional products, his approach has centred on making the products associated with those practices more reliable and accessible.

“The products themselves are extremely personal. It’s what is used in someone’s home, in their most private moments of faith. Our job isn’t to reinvent that, it’s to make sure the sourcing, quality and consistency are things people can actually rely on, the same way they’d expect from any category they trust,” Dhawan says.

Building Trust Beyond the Neighbourhood Store

For Dhawan, building ServDharm meant addressing an unusual branding challenge.

In most consumer categories, customers gradually learn to trust a brand. In pooja samagri, however, trust has traditionally existed long before brands entered the picture. It is often attached to a particular shop, family vendor or place of worship.

The challenge, therefore, was to translate that deeply local trust into a brand that could serve consumers across different cities and regions.

ServDharm adopted organised retail and e-commerce as part of this effort, allowing devotional products to move beyond the limitations of neighbourhood distribution.

The timing coincided with broader changes in Indian consumption. Consumers increasingly expect greater transparency, convenience and consistency even when purchasing products rooted in traditional practices.

The incense market illustrates the scale of this transition. India’s agarbatti and dhoop market was valued at approximately USD 1.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach around USD 2.2 billion by 2034. Agarbatti accounts for a significant share of the category because of its everyday use in household worship.

Alongside traditional demand, interest in natural formulations, organised retail and online purchasing is creating new opportunities for companies operating in the devotional products space.

Taking ServDharm Beyond India

Dhawan’s ambitions for ServDharm have also extended beyond the domestic market.

India already has a substantial international market for pooja products, particularly in countries with large Indian-origin communities. Markets including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Gulf and parts of Southeast Asia have significant demand for products associated with Indian religious and cultural practices.

For families living abroad, however, accessing familiar and trusted devotional products has often meant depending on local ethnic stores, informal imports or products carried from India by relatives.

Dhawan identified this as another gap that an organised digital-first business could address.

ServDharm’s international expansion has consequently focused on using e-commerce to make Indian devotional products more accessible to diaspora households.

For Dhawan, the distance from India actually makes reliability more important.

“Once you’re serving someone thousands of miles from home, trying to recreate a ritual that connects them back to their family and their roots, there is very little room for shortcuts,” he says.

That philosophy has become central to how Dhawan views ServDharm’s global opportunity. The company is not simply exporting products; it is operating in a category where products frequently carry emotional, cultural and religious significance for the consumer.

Entrepreneurship in a Category Built on Faith

Dhawan’s journey with ServDharm also reflects a wider change taking place across Indian consumer markets.

Over the past several decades, categories ranging from food and personal care to fashion and household products have gradually moved from fragmented local markets towards organised brands. Devotional products have been slower to make that transition.

The reason is partly structural, but it is also cultural. Religious products cannot necessarily be marketed in exactly the same way as conventional consumer goods.

Dhawan’s strategy has therefore been to organise the supply side without attempting to commercialise the faith itself.

It is a distinction that could become increasingly important as more businesses enter the spiritual and devotional economy.

Younger consumers are becoming accustomed to ordering everyday products online, while Indian families living overseas increasingly rely on digital commerce for products that were previously difficult to source outside India. These changes are creating space for organised devotional brands.

For Dhawan, however, the opportunity ultimately comes back to trust.

ServDharm’s evolution from an attempt to organise a fragmented domestic category to a business reaching consumers internationally represents the entrepreneurial bet he has made: that tradition and modern retail infrastructure do not necessarily have to compete.

Instead, technology, standardisation and organised distribution can potentially make traditional products more accessible while leaving the traditions themselves untouched.

As India’s devotional products industry gradually formalises, Dhawan is positioning ServDharm at the intersection of those two worlds: an old and deeply personal consumer category, and a new generation of organised, digitally connected Indian businesses seeking customers both at home and across the world.