Modak, Mushak & Marketing: How Brands Are Joining Ganpati Celebrations

The first modakam need not be the prettiest.

Picture a child pressing the mould a little too enthusiastically, an adult helping release the sweet, and somebody deciding that the slightly uneven one deserves a place beside its more accomplished companions. Before anything reaches the festive table, the kitchen has acquired a story.

For a food company, there is an interesting business idea in that scene. Some of the pleasure lies in making the food. A product can help a family begin.

Follow that thought through this year’s Ganpati celebrations and it takes several forms. A kit brings people to the kitchen. A familiar biscuit acquires the shape of a modak. Fans make the wait for darshan more comfortable. An animated Mushak gives devotees a way to participate in a personalised digital offering.

These are different expressions of a shared marketing opportunity: understanding what people enjoy, need and value during a festival, and finding a natural role for the brand within it.

Ganesh Chaturthi supplies a rich setting for that work. There is anticipation before Bappa’s arrival, care in the preparations, the pleasure of welcoming visitors and the collective energy of a public celebration. Each part offers a different starting point for creativity.

The brief, in effect, begins with the occasion itself.

Some Assembly, Many Memories

Sweet Karam Coffee has found its starting point in preparation. Its DIY Modakam Kit contains rice flour, a traditional jaggery-coconut filling and a mould, leaving families to shape and steam the sweets at home. A partnership with The Good Doll adds storytelling and creative play to the experience.

The product makes a particular distinction within convenience. Measuring, sourcing and organising can be simplified while leaving room for the enjoyable work people do together.

In the campaign coverage, co-founder Anand Bharadwaj put it this way: “Festivals were never only about eating what finally came to the table”.

That observation gives the kit its emotional centre. Recipes can travel through demonstration: how much filling to use, how to shape the sweet, when the batch is ready. A child asking a question gives an adult a chance to tell a story. The preparation becomes a small occasion of its own.

For the brand, this suggests a way to be remembered through an activity. The packet helps start something that the household completes in its own manner. The experience belongs to the people doing it, including their variations and their imperfect first attempts.

Marketing and branding experts reckon that convenience becomes especially valuable when it gives people more time for the part of a tradition they enjoy. A kit can simplify the preparation while leaving the family the pleasure of making something together. "The brand becomes associated with a moment people have helped create,” says Ashita Aggarwal, professor of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research.

And sometimes, the best-looking result is less memorable than the one a child proudly made.

A Familiar Favourite, Dressed for the Occasion

Once the sweets are ready, the story moves to the festive table, where another brand has found a different route to participation.

Britannia Bourbon and Bombay Sweet Shop have revived their Bourbon Chocolate Modak for Ganesh Chaturthi 2026. The sweet combines chocolate peda, crushed Bourbon biscuits and a Bourbon chocolate ganache centre, finished with edible gold.

Here, two familiar pleasures meet. The modak supplies the festive form. Bourbon contributes a recognisable chocolate-biscuit flavour. Bombay Sweet Shop brings the craft of turning that combination into mithai.

The arrangement gives each partner a clear job. It also makes the new product easy to explain. A shopper can recognise the occasion and the flavour without needing an elaborate account of why they belong together.

That is an advantage of thoughtful collaboration. Each brand brings something the other can use, and the result gives consumers a concrete way to experience the partnership.

For Bourbon, the modak offers a different serving moment. For Bombay Sweet Shop, a widely familiar biscuit becomes an ingredient for its interpretation of festive mithai. The product carries the idea all the way to the table.

Set beside the DIY kit, the collaboration reveals two ways to serve the same celebration. One makes preparation accessible; the other offers a ready-made variation. Both begin with the place food already occupies in family life.

Fan Following, Quite Literally

Beyond the home, the scale changes. At a public pandal, preparation becomes an undertaking involving organisers, volunteers, equipment and the movement of large numbers of visitors.

A brand can contribute through a very practical capability.

Signify’s EcoLink installation at Lalbaugcha Raja places fans across the pandal and queue areas. Four fan models, using BLDC motor technology, reportedly have been deployed to operate around the clock during the ten-day celebration. The activation also includes handheld fans for purchase and an activity inviting visitors to cheer “Hawa Cha Raja EcoLink” for gifts.

It is a product demonstration with an immediately understandable benefit. People spending time in a queue can experience the airflow where they need it.

That physical context helps the communication. A fan’s purpose becomes evident through use; the surroundings explain why it matters. The brand’s expertise meets a practical part of the visitor’s day.

The participatory activity adds a playful dimension to the installation. Cooling, visibility and a chance to join in sit within the same event, giving the brand several ways to become familiar.

There is precedent for this kind of contribution. During Ganeshotsav 2025, Polycab provided comfort areas, charging facilities and safety watchtowers around locations including Lalbaugcha Raja and Juhu Beach. Each addressed a practical requirement associated with the gathering.

The broader principle travels well beyond this festival. An occasion has physical needs as well as visual symbols. Understanding those needs can help a brand put its capabilities to work in a setting people care about.

Mushak Has a New Medium

Participation also takes a digital form in Pulse’s latest Ganesh Mahotsav campaign.

“Pulse Se Arpan, Bappa Ko Samarpan” allows devotees to create a personalised digital offering. In the described experience, a bell rings, Mushak appears and carries the chosen arpan to Bappa, before the journey concludes on screen. The programme runs from September 14 to 23, 2026, across markets including Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad and Jalgaon.

The activation includes Pulse packs and plantable seed-paper cards, while WhatsApp participants receive personalised Ganpati greetings. This is the fifth edition of the brand’s Ganesh Mahotsav association.

Mushak gives the digital experience a familiar character and a clear narrative role. Animation supplies movement; personalisation gives the participant something they have helped shape. The result is a symbolic interaction built around recognisable elements of the celebration.

For marketing, the interesting creative choice is the invitation to take part. A person makes a selection and follows a short sequence, becoming involved in how the experience unfolds.

The physical keepsake extends that sequence beyond the screen. A plantable card can accompany the participant home, while a personalised greeting can be shared with family and friends.

Together, these elements show how a campaign can use different formats for different purposes. The animation tells the story, the interaction invites involvement, and the greeting gives the participant something to carry into another conversation.

A Grain Can Hold a Big Idea

Earlier Ganpati activations offer striking examples of how familiar materials can produce memorable creative work.

In 2025, Aashirvaad featured images of Ganesha engraved on individual wheat grains. Its Ganesha Creation Zone connected the tiny keepsake with a larger participatory experience. For an atta brand, wheat supplied a direct link between the product and the execution.

The scale made it arresting. Something ordinarily handled by the handful invited close attention, allowing a familiar ingredient to become the focus of craftsmanship.

Instamart approached scale from another direction that year. At Mumbai’s Inorbit Mall, an eight-foot anamorphic Ganpati installation used more than 400 puja items. The individual objects formed a larger image when viewed from the intended perspective.

The creative connected the platform’s assortment with the occasion those items served. The spectacle emerged from arranging ordinary objects with care.

These examples enrich the current campaigns because they reveal a common discipline. Begin with something relevant—a grain, a puja item, a flavour, a household activity or a practical service—and develop the idea from there. The connection is available for people to discover through the experience itself.

Something to Bring to the Celebration

Taken together, the campaigns suggest several routes to festival relevance. A brand can help people prepare, contribute a product suited to the occasion, make a gathering more comfortable or offer an enjoyable way to participate.

Each route draws on a different strength. A food company understands ingredients and flavour. An appliance company brings equipment. A digital experience brings interaction and storytelling. Creative work becomes more convincing when those strengths have a clear purpose in the setting.

“A festival gives a brand the opportunity to return to a meaningful moment in people’s lives,” says Aggarwal. A useful contribution, repeated with care, can build familiarity over time. The creative expression can change each year while the role remains recognisable: helping people prepare, gather or celebrate together.

The four current examples belong in one story because the celebration connects them. Their settings change, but each meets people somewhere along the same journey: getting ready, gathering, sharing and remembering.

Back in the imagined kitchen, the first batch is ready. The uneven modakam has survived. A child recognises it immediately and makes sure everybody knows who shaped it.

For a brand hoping to become part of a family’s festive memory, that is a lovely place to begin. The mould came in a box. The story they will tell about it belongs to the family.