Earlier Abhi posted about the booming hair trade at the main Venkateshwara temple in Tirupati. It turns out that the sale of devotees’ hair is only one of this massive temple’s revenue streams, which dwarf those of American megachurches. Other revenue streams include cash, gold and diamond donations, laddoo sales and e-hundi.
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Tirupati |
E-hundi? Yes, electronic donations. You can donate to the temple right from ATMs owned by Andhra Bank and State Bank of India. The lords work in mysterious ways, but especially at withdrawal time:
“Andhra Bank ATM cardholders can make payments into the `hundi’ of Lord Venkateswara of Tirumala, from any of the bank’s ATMs. All they have to do is insert their card, enter the amount to be credited to the hundi account and it would be done instantly. In future, the facility would be extended to make payments for railway reservations and other services…” [Link]Tirupati is also the most visited temple in the world. It is estimated that more that 50,000 people visit the temple everyday; this makes it almost 19 million people in a year, almost double the estimated number of people visiting Vatican City… Tirupati is the second richest religious institution after the Vatican City… it usually takes anywhere from 2 to 40 hours, depending on the season, to get to the Sanctom sanctorum from the time one registers into the queue system. [Link - thanks, tef]
The temple staff alone amounts to a number of 18,000. [Link]
Hundi collections (cash donation by devotees) account for roughly one-third of the Tirupati trust’s income. It also earns substantial money from the sale of human hair (offered by devotees) and laddoos, apart from interest on bank deposits. [Link]
For added convenience, you can book religious pilgrimages at State Bank branches worldwide. Separation of temple and state, what?
The bank is in tie-up with the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams management on a package to get the various `sevas’ in Tirumala temple and cottages booked at any of the bank’s branches in the world. ’ `e-hundi’ is also part of the software, wherein a devotee can drop his offerings either in an ATM in the country or at the 52 overseas offices in 33 countries. [Link]The bank was nationalised in 1955 with the Reserve Bank of India having a 60% stake. [Link]
Cash donations are the main source of income:
An anonymous devotee has offered a $1 million note at the Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh, creating a sensation in India’s richest shrine… The temple staff noticed the note… while counting the daily collections in the ‘hundi’, or cash box… They said Andhra Bank officials had confirmed that it was a genuine note. If that is so, it is expected to fetch Rs. 50 million for the temple, which earns a whopping Rs. 5 billion [$116M, ~$300M PPP-adjusted] annually through daily offerings. [Link]
The wealthy and famous give diamonds and gold:
Earlier this year, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan offered diamond ornaments worth Rs. 100 million [$2.3M, ~$6M PPP-adjusted] to the deity after his recovery from illness. Believed to have been constructed in 1570 AD, the temple earns Rs. 5 billion annually through daily offerings by devotees and funds a university besides other institutions. [Link]
“India’s richest hill temple has been netting annually an average of about 700 kg of gold offerings through its ‘hundi…’” My lord, that’s a lot of money… the annual donations in gold alone is about $82.76 million. [Link]
As a rough guess, the temple seems to be pulling in around $250M-$300M/year ($750M PPP-adjusted). By comparison, America’s wealthiest megachurch (World Changers in Atlanta) makes ‘only’ around $80M a year. Even the evangelist’s name is Dollar:
Young couples, women with babies, elderly men, singles—nearly 8,500 people from Georgia and neighboring states push into the church’s $20 million World Dome auditorium…. [Pastor Creflo] Dollar has built one of the biggest evangelical ministries in the United States, with 25,000 members and $80 million in revenue this year. [Link]WCCI members can tithe online by setting up automatic account withdrawals managed by the church…
Pastor Dollar, whom critics have dubbed Pass The Dollar and Cashflow Dollar for his ostentatious displays of wealth, is not shy about his success. He owns two Roll-Royces and flies the country in a Gulfstream-3 private jet… ‘My church gave me a Rolls-Royce. I would never spend that much money on a Rolls-Royce for several reasons. But when your church congregation — 20,000 at that time — come to you and say, “Pastor, we want you to drive the best,” I’m not going to turn that down. It would be a dishonor to the people that gave it to me.’ [Link - thanks, DDIA]
America’s largest megachurch (Lakewood in Houston) owns its own stadium, but its revenues are ‘only’ $55M a year:
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Lakewood’s stadium |
The nondenominational Lakewood Church, the nation’s largest congregation, moved into the Compaq Center, once the home of the Houston Rockets, over the weekend. After $95 million in renovations, including two waterfalls and enough carpeting to cover nine football fields, the arena now belongs to a charismatic church with a congregation of 30,000, revenues of $55 million last year and a television audience in the millions. [Link]
American megachurches are unapologetically run like businesses and invest heavily in tech in ways that strike me as a bit creepy in the context of faith:
Megachurches can look at their data and identify members who could be volunteering more, who are likely to spend money on products and contribute donations—and how much—and who are becoming discontent and may abandon the church. Visalia First Assembly of God, an evangelical congregation in California’s San Joaquin Valley, improved visitor retention to 59 percent simply by changing the way church officials interact with first-time attendees—at the suggestion of new analytical software.They know who’s related to whom, which church member is battling illness or is seeking a mate—and how best to reach out to people in each circumstance. A bright “we haven’t heard from you in a while, come on back” letter is inappropriate for a longtime church volunteer dealing with chemotherapy. But it’s effective when a 23-year-old single man begins to skip his midweek prayer group. [Link]
So successful are some evangelicals that they’re opening up branches like so many new Home Depots (HD ) or Subways. This year, the 16.4 million-member Southern Baptist Convention plans to “plant” 1,800 new churches using by-the-book niche-marketing tactics. “We have cowboy churches for people working on ranches, country music churches, even several motorcycle churches aimed at bikers,” says Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board. [Link - thanks, badmash]
Sure, some megachurches take donations from automatic paycheck deductions. But have they convinced Bank of America to let casual attendees tithe straight from the ATM? Does BofA let you book a revival weekend at a local branch?
A better scale comparison is the Vatican, with annual revenues of ~$245M. But in the battle of Templezilla vs. American Megachurch, no contest 
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