Hundreds of family workshops in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, hand-make Ganapati idols in a craft passed from one generation to the next. Together with our sister company Unitary Tech, we designed and built MurtiTrack, the app those workshops now run on. It lives on the phone, holds up under the festival rush and speaks Marathi from the very first screen.
What the workshops were up against
The weeks before Ganesh Chaturthi are the whole year for an idol workshop. Orders pour in, every one with a delivery date that cannot slip. Clay, paint and other materials are bought at prices that move daily, and each artisan is paid for every idol they finish. Before MurtiTrack, the entire season was managed in notebooks, over the phone and from memory, and that cost owners in ways that were easy to feel and hard to fix:
- Stock was guesswork. Owners couldn't quickly see which idols were free, which were booked and which sizes were running short, exactly when it mattered most.
- Balances slipped away. With no single record of who owed what, many outstanding amounts were simply never collected.
- Wages caused arguments. Artisans are paid per piece at agreed rates, and without a shared count, both sides remembered the numbers differently.
- Tax time meant starting over. A year of purchases and sales had to be rebuilt from scattered notebooks.
- The software spoke the wrong language. Owners, staff and customers all work in Marathi, while every business app on offer was in English.
The brief was to give a traditional trade modern software that felt made for it, not translated for it.
How the two teams approached it
Univolute and Unitary Tech worked as one team. We began on the workshop floor, learning how orders are taken, how artisans are paid and how customers are kept in the loop during the season, and shaped the app around those habits instead of asking owners to change them. Three rules guided every decision:
- Marathi comes first. Every screen, number, date, invoice and report is native Marathi, with English one tap away.
- The phone is the office. Work happens on the workshop floor, often with a weak signal, so the app keeps working when the connection drops.
- Built for the rush. Several people in one workshop can use the app at the same time, each on their own phone, without tripping over each other.
What we built
Stock and orders together
Each idol is recorded with a photo, size and category, and stock updates itself as orders come in. Seasonal pre-orders, advances and delivery dates sit next to everyday orders, with reminders so no deadline slips by.
Payments followed up on WhatsApp
Invoices, payment reminders, statements and dispatch photos go to customers on WhatsApp, the app they already open every day, and every message is logged.
Wages everyone can see
Rates, work logs and advances are entered once and visible to both owner and artisan, so both sides work from the same figures.
Suppliers and purchases
Each purchase of raw material is recorded against its supplier, so owners can see exactly what they spend and with whom.
Reports on demand
Sales, purchases, supplier spending and artisan costs download as tidy Marathi PDF reports whenever they're needed.
Roles for the whole team
Owners add staff with clear roles, from order taking to view-only access, so each person sees what they need and nothing more.
Security that stays out of the way
Behind the simple screens is protection you'd expect from enterprise software: passwordless sign-in, verified payments and strict separation between each workshop's data.
What changed
- Paper ledgers are retired. Sales, collections, dues and best-selling idols are on a live dashboard.
- Money owed is coming in. Clear Marathi statements on WhatsApp replaced awkward phone calls with a polite, professional nudge, and owners are recovering balances they had once given up on.
- No more wage disputes. Owners and artisans read from the same record.
- Tax time is one download. Records that once took days to rebuild are ready whenever they're needed.
- Customers noticed. Marathi invoices, receipts and photo confirmation of dispatch brought a level of service new to the trade, and quickly became the feature people talked about most.
- Hardly any training. Because the app speaks their language, owners who had never used business software were taking orders on it within a day.
Why it matters to us
MurtiTrack is proof that a small, traditional business deserves software as capable as anything a large company uses, in its own language. It is also a good example of how Univolute and Unitary Tech work together: one team, shared standards and a product that runs a real trade every season.
MurtiTrack was designed and built jointly by Univolute Tech Global and our sister company, Unitary Tech Global.
