Sabitri Brata: Bhubaneswar Youth Ensures Fasting Women Get Puja Items Through His Home Delivery App

Bhubaneswar: The orders continued to trickle in on Thursday as married women across Odisha observed Sabitri Brata for the long life of their husbands.

“We still have around 60 orders to deliver,” said Jyoti Ranjan Sahoo with his ‘Mo Bhai’ app flooded with requests for Sabitri Brata items.

Online home delivery apps are a hit with people amid the COVID-induced lockdown. With the Odisha government extending the lockdown in the entire state till June 17 to prevent people from crowding markets for festival shopping, this app has proved to be a boon for the elderly parents, who want to send puja items and fruits to their daughters for observing the rituals.

“We had come across people who faced difficulties buying these items from markets amid the lockdown. It was then that we decided to start home delivery,” said Jyoti, who launched the app and the service last year.

The puja items, including vermilion, alta, a packet of bindis, four sankha (bangles), a mirror, a wooden comb and a book on the legends of Sabitri, besides mango, apple, banana, coconut, date palm, sagoo and rock sugar, come gift wrapped with two price tags- Rs 500 and Rs 1000.

“We have tried to include almost everything required for observing the puja in the gift hamper,” said the 25-year-old.

Jyoti said that the orders spiralled to 6,000 from a mere 200 last year. “We had never expected such a huge response,” he said, attributing it to media coverage and feedback of customers on social media platforms.

Having delivered the items for Sabitra Brata in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Balasore through his staff of 15, he is now gearing up to meet the orders for the three-day Raja festival, beginning June 14. “We have already received 30+ orders and expecting it to go up to 400. The gift packets contain mitha (sweets) and pithas (cakes),” said Jyoti, who also delivers cooked food through his app HappyEats.