Siddhivinayak Temple to take shares as donation

MUMBAI: Shree Siddhivinayak Ganapati Temple Trust, which manages the Shree Siddhivinayak Temple in Mumbai has tied up with SBICAP Securities to provide an electronic platform through which devotees can make offering of shares of listed companies as donation.

Devotees will initially be able to offer shares through the demat account set up for the temple, SBICAP Securities said. This initiative will later be extended to bonds, mutual funds and gold exchange traded funds.

“The account has been set up to enable devotees to deposit shares. The deposited shares will then be converted into cash within a short period of time by the temple,” said Mani Palvesan, MD, SBICAP Securities.

The trend of temples or religious trusts accepting shares as donation from devotees apart from the traditional offering of cash and gold is not new. They take this route to address hassles pertaining to transfer of physical share certificates which they receive as donations by devotees in hundis.

In August last year, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam’s which oversees the operations and finances of one of the richest temples in the country—the Tirumala Venkateswara temple—had opened a demat account with the Stock Holding Corporation of India.

CDSL plans to take this kind of initiatives to other temples.

“We have written letters to a devasthanams but it will take time,” said P S Reddy, MD & CEO, Central Depository Service.