BENGALURU: Keeping up with the changing times brought on by the pandemic, a Bengaluru-based startup has come up with a contactless holy water (teertha) dispenser for a temple. Devotees apprehensive of taking ‘teertha’ offered by the priests for fear of contracting Covid, can now safely do so as the dispenser ensures that there is zero contact.
The Nano Kinetics Research Lab Pvt Ltd has designed a foot-high liquid dispensing device, specially crafted for potable fluids, for the Sri Vinayaka Bhavani Shankara Temple on Mysuru Road in Nagarbhavi.
Even though the lockdown was relaxed, places of worship have been seeing poor footfall of devotees. To draw in more crowd, the temple approached the startup to come up with a contactless ‘teertha’ dispenser to address the safety concerns of devotees.
“On the request of one of the temple founders, we prepared the prototype and kept it for use last week. The response has been overwhelming. The temple trust members made a video and shared it on social media,” Jagadish Kumar, co-founder of the firm, told The New Indian Express.The temple authorities have been using the dispenser for a week and have received positive response from devotees. Some temple staffers said that those from other religious institutions have approached them on how they can get one too.
Though the dispenser is yet to be officially launched, the firm has already bagged several orders from Karnataka and neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, besides from countries like the US, Dubai, Australia and Malaysia. To meet the demand, the firm is now working on getting a patent.The firm is also working on finalising the cost of the dispenser. “So far, we have estimated the price to be around Rs 6,100 per unit, without the labour and material cost. The final amount is still being worked out,” Kumar said.