Away from his Hajipur home, Amit Kumar used to have a tough time arranging puja essentials for Chhath in Faridabad. Till last year. 

This time, the 33-year-old IT professional ordered the basics his mother needed from echhathpooja.com. No longer does he need to visit scores of shops in the north Indian town. Everything is available at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger. 
Days away from his state’s most important festival, Amit is ready with his “arghya basket” at home now. “Earlier, I had to go from one market to another to buy Chhath items. It would take me at least three days to finish shopping. It was quite a challenge looking for all the items in and around Faridabad. At many markets, I had to park my vehicle 
2-3km away before scouting for the essentials. This year, I did not even have to step out of home. I just placed the order online and everything was delivered at my doorstep,” says Amit. 

The brain behind the Chhath brainwave is Sudhakar Sharan. The 38-year-old founder-cum-CEO of Radiant eCommerce, based in New Delhi, is from Motihari. He developed echhathpooja.com in October, specifically for devotees from Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh who live outside their home states and face difficulties arranging for all the rituals. After all, you have to get so many things — ingredients for preparing Nahay Khay and Kharna prasad and the 30-44 offerings required for Pehli and Doosri Arghya. 

Till November 9, Sudhakar had received 3,500 orders from cities around the country, including Delhi and Pune. He said the motivation behind this one-of-its-kind website came from home. “People living in metropolitan cities get time for personal work only on Sundays. Getting everything ready for Chhath takes quite some time, as around 108 items are used in the rituals. I remember how difficult it used to be to get sugarcane stem, green turmeric and other items for my mother. I knew there were more like me. So, I decided to launch this website,” says Sudhakar. 

Planning to set up such a website began a-year-and-a-half ago but the dream materialised only around end of October. Says Sudhakar: “In Delhi and other cities, you don’t get things like earthen elephants (mitti ka hathi), soops (traditional bamboo baskets), ginger and small plants easily. Finding artik leaves and small turmeric plants is also tough. Our website delivers all these important items to the devotees at their doorsteps.”

The portal, echhathpooja.com, delivers products in five categories — standard arghya basket, mini arghya basket, arghya, arghya samagri and Kosi basket.

The standard arghya basket contains around 50 items, including soop, ground rice (pithar) and daliya (small bamboo baskets). It is priced at Rs 3,500. The mini arghya basket has 30 products for Rs 2,000. The Arghya basket gives you 13 items such as daliya chhitta (big basket), coconut with water, lemon, decorated plate for worship, dry mango wood and earthen lamps for Rs 250. The arghya samagri basket has 15 items, which are priced differently. The Kosi basket with items made of soil is priced at Rs 800.

Sudhakar says he has a team that buys all the Chhath items in bulk to provide to customers. Delivery is promised anywhere in the country within five days. 

Rajeev Singh, a Muzaffarpur resident who works at an IT company in Delhi, was all too happy to complete his Chhath shopping from Sudhakar’s website. 

“For the first time, arranging the Chhath Puja materials for my mother was not a headache. I have placed another order for my mother-in-law who lives in Patna. She will be pleased with me and so would be my wife,” he said over phone from Delhi.