Religion marries technology to feed masses

NEW DELHI (Reuters) — Temples in India, which feed millions of people for free every day, making them some of the world's biggest food buyers, are going online for real-time prices to beat profiteers, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

India's richest temple, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, began checking prices at online commodities exchanges this month to beat mark-ups from traditional suppliers of up to 50 percent, said the Economic Times.

The temple, near Madras, spends about 3 billion rupees ($70 million) a year to provide free meals, including almost 40 million laddoos.

Workers use online exchanges to buy and set prices for everything from cashews to cooking oil for the temple's vast cauldrons.

Sikhism's holiest site, the Golden Temple in the northern city of Amritsar, and other shrines and temples around India are likely to follow suit, said the Times.

"It is for the first time in India that a temple authority has tied up with a commodity broker," it quoted Gilby Mathew, of JRG Wealth Management, the brokerage in Kerala servicing the Tirupati temple, as saying.