Jaan Girdeinis has spent more than a decade watching how online platforms earn or forfeit user trust in the iGaming sector, and the parallels he sees in digital spirituality are difficult to ignore. Ancient Hindu practices, AI-generated horoscopes, and live puja bookings now constitute a multi-crore industry sitting on the same app stores as ride-hailing and food delivery, and the gap between a legitimate platform and an exploitative one comes down to the same variables he observes across other online categories where real money changes hands. CasinoGuru LT rates and scrutinizes online casinos against precisely those measures, applying the kind of structured review that spiritual-app users are now being asked to conduct themselves. That evaluative discipline, Girdeinis notes, is not unique to gambling. It belongs wherever trust and payment meet.
Young Indians and the Cultural Reclaiming Driving Demand
The demand surge is documented and, according to the experts cited by Times Now, rooted in something more durable than trend. Sidhharrth S Kumaar, Chief Astrologer at NumroVani, identifies three interlocking drivers. First, many young people lack access to judgment-free support systems and turn to spiritual guidance where social censure is absent. Second, rising uncertainty in daily life has made the search for grounding more urgent. Third, a desire for personalized guidance has made the one-size prescription of institutional religion feel insufficient.
Alongside these practical pressures, Kumaar points to a cultural dimension. Younger Indians increasingly believe their heritage was deliberately obscured and misrepresented, and that digital technology gives them a way to access it without the institutional gatekeeping of temples or traditional family networks. That sense of reclaiming, rather than merely consuming, gives the category a loyalty that ordinary consumer apps rarely generate.
Dr. Neelam Naseeb, Founder of Soul Compass Tarot and Therapy, frames the generational shift differently, pointing to a changed relationship with belief itself.
“The new generation is more fluid and wants to break traditional belief systems. Everything is energy, even Albert Einstein believed in this.”
Acharya Anita, a New-Age Spiritual Mentor and Life Coach, captures the net effect in structural terms, arguing that what digital access changed is reach, not meaning. “Technology has made spirituality more accessible, allowing ancient practices like Rudrabhishek, havans, and astrology consultations to reach people across the world,” she said. “In that sense, it is certainly a democratization of spiritual knowledge.”
Democratization or Commercialization — and Where the Dividing Line Falls
The question of whether convenience equals commodification divides the experts, though not cleanly. When asked directly whether app-based spirituality is democratization or commercialization, Kumaar gave the most candid possible answer: “In my personal opinion, it is both.” The platform is morally neutral. Intent determines the outcome.
Acharya Anita holds the same position, though she locates the failure at a specific point. “The real question, however, is intent,” she said. “If technology is used to spread authentic wisdom, guide people, and help them connect with their inner selves, it serves a higher purpose. Commercialization becomes a concern only when faith is treated as a product rather than a path of transformation.”
The Maha Kumbh Mela offered a concrete illustration of where that line blurs in practice. During the festival, several self-styled online godmen reportedly asked devotees who could not travel to send photographs, claiming they would perform the holy dip or ritual on the person’s behalf, sometimes for a fee. No fraud was necessarily involved in every instance, but the episode revealed how easily the form of devotion can be separated from its substance and repriced.
Kumaar identifies a language register that signals the shift from guidance to exploitation. Phrases like “pay more for faster blessings” or “premium ritual for guaranteed results,” he said, “damage both spirituality and trust.” A platform meeting his standard for legitimacy requires authenticity, transparency, proper Vidhi (ritual procedure), fair Dakshina (offering), qualified practitioners, and a strict absence of fear-based sales. Such a platform, he argues, can function as “a powerful bridge between tradition and modern life.”
Fake Hawans, Credential Fraud, and AI Reports Sold Without Disclosure
The risks are documented, specific, and, in at least one case, criminal. A woman was scammed by individuals posing as spiritual astrologers who convinced her to send money repeatedly for rituals meant to resolve her problems. The scammers sent her photographs of hawans that were later found to be entirely fabricated.
That case sits at the extreme end, but Kumaar catalogs systemic risks that fall short of outright fraud yet still cause measurable harm. Sales tactics built on fear or on guarantees of outcomes are one category. AI-generated astrology reports sold without disclosure that they are automated constitute another. The credential problem may be the most widespread. “One can see a lot of practitioners using ‘Dr’ before their name,” Kumaar said. “The fact of the matter is that 90% of them are not eligible for the same.”
Dr. Naseeb frames the behavioral red flag more simply. Push selling, she argues, is diagnostic regardless of the platform’s stated purpose.
“If any kind of push selling happens, automatically its moving away from the intent of spirituality.”
Her fuller point is structural. “This space is for healing and should only be need based and not pushed.” When a service arrives before the need is articulated by the seeker, the transaction has already inverted the relationship.
Pricing Ethics and the Structural Fix Experts Are Calling For
On the question of whether spiritual services should carry a price at all, the two most prominent voices in the Times Now report reach opposite conclusions from compatible premises. Kumaar draws a categorical distinction between spirituality as such and the services that deliver it. “Spirituality should not have a price tag. But spiritual services can,” he said, listing legitimate costs as the time of a priest, ritual materials, temple arrangements, travel, teaching, counselling, research, and platform infrastructure.
Dr. Naseeb rejects the premise of the first half of that formulation entirely. “A spiritualist should have a price tag,” she said. “No one listens to free knowledge.” For her, payment functions as energy exchange and as a mechanism that makes seekers engage seriously with what they receive. Both positions agree, implicitly, that the money itself is not the problem. The question is whether the transaction is honest.
On that front, Kumaar argues that market pressure and individual discernment are insufficient. He calls for mandatory disclosure rules modeled on those that govern the food and tobacco industries, requiring clear labeling on what is real, what is automated, and who holds genuine qualifications. The industry currently operates without such requirements. Practitioners may claim credentials they do not hold, platforms may present AI outputs as personalized consultancy, and no standardized framework obliges either to disclose the difference. The gap between what accountability would require and what currently exists is the concrete problem the industry’s next phase will have to answer.
