Does a puja have to be done in my presence to count?

No. Performing a rite on behalf of someone who cannot attend is the basis of the arrangement and long predates video. Your absence does mean the recording is your only evidence, which is why an unedited one matters.

Is online puja genuine? Here is how to check: including how to check us.

The honest answer is: some of it is, most of it is not, and the difference is checkable in about four minutes. This page gives you the checks. We sell online puja, so read this with that in mind, and then run the checks on us.

What “online puja” actually describes

It describes a rite performed by a practitioner on behalf of someone who is not present, and recorded. Only the second half of that is new. Having a puja performed at a temple you cannot get to, in your name, by someone who can, is old and ordinary: it is what a family does when a death, a distance or a job puts them on the wrong side of the country. The internet changed how you find the practitioner and how the recording reaches you. It did not invent the arrangement.

So the question is not whether the category is genuine. It is whether the particular thing you paid for was actually performed, individually, by the person named, on the day stated. That is a question about a seller, not about a tradition, and it has a factual answer.

Six questions to ask before you pay

Is the sankalp individual, or is my name on a list? Sankalp is where a rite becomes yours. Many cheap online pujas are group rites where a hundred names are read out at the start. That is a real thing and it has its place, but it is not what most people think they are buying at that price. Ask which one it is. A seller who will not answer plainly has answered.
Who is performing it, by name, and will I see their face? Not “our learned pandits.” A name, before you pay. If nobody is willing to be named, nobody is accountable.
Where, by name? A temple or a place, stated in writing. A stock photograph of an altar is not an address.
Do I get the whole sitting, unedited, or a clip? This is the single most useful question. A forty-second reel cut to music can be assembled from footage of anything. One unbroken take of the full rite cannot.
What is the samagri list, and is it in writing beforehand? It tells you what the money bought, and it lets you see afterwards whether what arrived matched what was promised.
What happens if I ask for a refund? Read the policy before you pay, not after. A rite that has already been performed cannot be un-performed, so the honest policy says so and explains what is refundable and when.

What a real recording looks like

You are not judging the production. You are judging continuity. A genuine recording is usually long, plain, badly lit and boring, and it runs without cuts through the parts that would be tedious to fake: the sankalp with your name and gotra spoken aloud, the mantra count, the offerings in sequence. A suspicious one is short, is cut, has music over it, never shows a face clearly, and shows nothing that ties it to you specifically.

One concrete test: your own name. If your name and gotra are audible in the recording, in one continuous shot with the rest of the rite, the recording is of your rite. If your name appears only in the WhatsApp message that delivered the video, it proves nothing about the video.

The claim that should end the conversation

If a seller tells you what the puja will do: that it will fix a marriage, clear a court case, cure an illness, remove a Shani dosh, bring money in ninety days: stop there. Not because remedies are worthless, but because nobody can know that, and the confident ones are the ones selling on fear.

In India this is also a legal line rather than a matter of taste. The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 prohibits advertising remedies as though they treat or cure disease, and consumer-protection law treats a guaranteed outcome that does not arrive as a misleading claim. A seller who advertises cures is telling you both that they will say anything and that they have not read the law they are operating under.

The other direction: what a seller cannot fake

Registration is checkable and takes a minute. An Indian company has a CIN you can look up on the MCA portal; the name on the register is the entity you are actually paying. Ours is The Third Eye Astro Private Limited, CIN U96906UP2025PTC230487, in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and White Magic is its trading name. If a site takes your money and will not tell you who legally receives it, that is worth more than any testimonial on the page.

Now run the checks on us

Individual sankalp in your name and gotra, always: we do not sell group rites. The practitioner and the place are named to you in writing before you pay and are visible on the recording. You get the whole sitting, one take, unedited, the same evening. The samagri list goes to you before the day. And we will not tell you what any of it will cause, for health, money or anyone’s future, because we cannot know that.

There is one check we currently fail in public, and it would be dishonest to leave it out of a page like this: we do not yet publish the practitioner’s name or the temple on the website, because we will not print a name before that person has agreed to be named and filmed. You get both in writing before you pay. When they agree, they will appear here.

Ask us any of the six See the four rites

Questions

Is a group puja a scam?

No. Collective rites are a real and old form. The problem is selling one at the price and description of an individual rite without saying so. Ask which you are buying.

Does the puja have to be done in my presence to count?

No: performing a rite on behalf of someone who cannot attend is the entire basis of the arrangement, and long predates video. What your absence does mean is that the recording is your only evidence, which is why an unedited one matters so much.

Is it wrong to pay for a puja at all?

Dakshina for a practitioner and the cost of samagri are ordinary and always have been. What is worth resisting is pricing tied to how frightened you are: a “severe dosh” tier, an urgency surcharge, a package that grows each time you ask a question.

How do I check a CIN?

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs runs a public master-data search on its portal. Enter the CIN and you get the registered name, date of incorporation and registered state. It costs nothing.

What if I have already paid someone and got a clip?

Ask for the full unedited recording and the samagri list in writing. Both are reasonable to request and neither is hard to provide if the rite happened. The response tells you what you need to know.