Post a reel the day before ticket release, with 15k comments of "Extension pls": how a Tirumala ticket-booking extension squeezed into the top four among 24 peers

Tirumala Info Booking Helper is a free Chrome extension that fills in pilgrim details on the Tirumala Temple (TTD) official booking site in one click. 6,000 users, 4.78 rating, ranked fourth among at least 24 similar tools, and first by number of ratings. It broke out not because of its features but because its creator already had a pilgrimage Instagram account with 200k followers. Followers of copycats won't have that account, but the "audience first, tool second" approach can be applied to other must-have forms.

23 video from Sep

On 2026 Sep 23, the Instagram account "Tirumala Tirupati Daily Vlogs" (@tirumalatirupativlogs, about 204k followers) posted a reel with one line of caption: "About Our Chrome extension and I helped my friends and family for Booking: Comment as chrome to get details and how to install." To get the install instructions, commenters type "chrome".

The next morning at 10 a.m., TTD released the ₹300 Special Entry Darshan tickets for December (release schedule per Deccan Chronicle), and accommodation opened at 3 p.m. By Nov 6 the reel showed about 12k likes and 15k comments (Instagram page, 11-06). People are still in the comments asking "Extension pls" and "Extension please".

Per a third-party extension stats site (unverified), the extension had fewer than 500 users at the end of August. Around 25 Sep it jumped from 543 to about 4,000 over two days, then hovered between 5,000 and 7,000. Those two days line up with the reel going up and the ticket release starting.

What it is

Tirumala is in Andhra Pradesh and is one of the most visited Hindu temples by Indian pilgrims. TTD releases tickets three months ahead every month, and ₹300 fast-track tickets sell out in minutes. The bottleneck is the "Pilgrim Details" page, which asks for each person's name, age, gender, ID type and ID number. Typing this in by hand for a family of six takes over a minute.

The extension does one thing: it stores your family's details locally and fills in that page with one click. It covers the full flow: ₹300 fast-track tickets, Padmavathi temple tickets, Arjitha Seva (including the Gothram field required for Divyanugraha Homam), SRIVANI, accommodation, and Srivari Seva volunteer registration. The interface supports 7 Indian languages, and the user guide comes in English and Telugu. The official page lists details written for people who have actually fought for tickets: "Selected 4 tickets but only saved 2 people? It will stop you", "Tells you before release time whether your details are complete", and "When it fails, explains in plain language whether this slot is worth retrying".

It repeatedly stresses what it does not touch: no queue bypass, no captcha bypass, no touching the "Pay Now" button, data never leaves the device, and the extension is "completely offline".

Store page data: 6,000 users, 4.78 stars from 50 ratings, listed Jul 21, last updated Oct 23 (Chrome Web Store, 11-06). From Nov 1 to 6 daily users stayed flat, which makes sense since those days are outside the ticket release window.

Where users come from: their own account, their own site

On the store the developer is listed as telugunewsblog. Behind it are two things: the Instagram account "Tirumala Tirupati Daily Vlogs" (3,000+ posts, with a verified Facebook page of the same name) and the info site tirumalainfo.com, which updates free SSD token availability and TTD news daily. The extension's landing page sits under /chrome/ on that site.

The people who follow this account are already the people watching for ticket releases every month. Posting "I used this to get tickets for my family" the day before a release, then driving engagement with "comment chrome to get the install guide", is the main and only confirmed acquisition method for this extension.

The second move is using a free key to bring users back to the account. The Firefox version history is clear: v1.14.8 in Oct 9 changed to "free for 7 days, then DM Instagram to get a free key"; v1.14.12 in Oct 19 extended the trial to 30 days; v1.15.1 in Oct 22 became "completely free, no key needed". The key cost no money; what it asked for was following the account and sending it a DM. It was removed two weeks later. No reason was given publicly; our guess is the DMs could not be handled.

A side signal: 6,000 users left 50 ratings, more than the 30k-user leader (30 ratings). Users who came from the follower base seem more willing to leave ratings (inference; whether ratings were solicited cannot be verified).

What we did not find: no Reddit posts by the extension's own team, no mentions on X, no media coverage, and no ads found in ad libraries (for a product this small, not finding ads does not mean none were run).

Who it's competing with

This is a crowded niche. The Chrome Web Store has at least 24 TTD form-filling extensions, and more than 15 were added in 2026 8–September alone (Chrome Web Store, 11-06):

There are also a dozen or so with tens to hundreds of users, one called "TTD Pilgrims Manager" that directly borrows the leader's name, one called ttdbooking.in with almost identical copy, and an open-source version on GitHub.

Charging money drew backlash. TTD Autofill Assistant posted a "free extension" thread in r/TirumalaDarshan in January that got 138 upvotes and 106 comments. Around August it started charging, and the community responded with posts like "TTD Autofill extension isn't free anymore", and free alternatives were listed shortly after. The leader, TTD Pilgrims Manager, charges a subscription and has a rating of 3.33, the lowest of the top few.

October: TTD blocked auto-filling

In early October, the main TTD site ttdevasthanams.ap.gov.in blocked "auto-input". On Reddit, the thread "TTD has blocked auto-fill extensions on the booking site" got 10-09,37 upvotes and 28 comments. On X, @ttd_updates posted on Oct 13: "Good news for all devotees TTD website now blocking autofill extensions", with 141k views. For some pilgrims these extensions felt unfair, so the block was good news.

The extension changed the same day. On Oct 9, v1.14.8 reverted to a "paste helper" that needs a click per field and then Ctrl+V. On Oct 21, v1.15.0 said on its site "One-click autofill is back", and the Firefox version notes that full autofill on the main site requires Firefox 128 or later, with older versions still using paste. At the same time, the competitor ttddarshanautofill.com's FAQ still says "TTD's site no longer accepts one-click filling from any tool", and TTD QuickFill also fell back to copy-paste. We have not tested whether one-click filling actually still works on TTD's main site.

This shows the weak point of tools like this: users, features and ratings can all drop to zero the moment TTD changes a web page.

Where the money comes from: not the extension

The extension is free and the store does not list in-app purchases. What it actually builds is an account: everyone who installs it is a potential follower of the ticket-release content, and the bigger the account, the more promotion and local business it can take on (inference; revenue is not public). Anyone in this niche who tries to earn directly from the extension either gets attacked or gets undercut by a free version.

If it were you

C: a useful tactic to learn from, but copying a TTD form-filler is not worth it. This one took off because of its own 200k-follower account, and nobody else following it has that. The niche already has 24 similar tools, none of which can charge, and TTD can block them at any time.

Who it suits: people who already have an audience in a must-have niche, such as vertical content accounts, info sites or group admins covering visa appointments, exam registration, hot attraction and event tickets, or government subsidy applications. You don't lack traffic; you lack a tool that gets your followers coming back every month.

Who it doesn't suit: indie devs with no audience who hope to build organic traffic through store search. There are a dozen or more of these extensions in this niche, and most stall at a few hundred users. Also anyone hoping to earn subscriptions from the extension itself: users will complain "not free anymore", and a free version will be listed the next day.

How to do it: pick a form that is high-frequency, time-limited and requires the same information to be re-entered each time (ideally one that opens monthly or weekly). Build an extension that solves only that one form: store data locally, make no network calls, state clearly that it does not bypass captchas or touch payment, and catch the errors that really happen during a rush, like "headcount doesn't match ticket count" or "details incomplete". Build the interface and guide in the local language.

How to get users: the day before the opening, post a short video from your own account saying "I used it to get tickets for my family", and drive engagement with "comment a keyword to get the install guide". Host the landing page on your own info site. To turn users into followers you can copy its "DM for a free key" trick, but first make sure you can handle the DMs. It removed that two weeks later.

When to start: don't aim for a particular date. Follow the target platform's opening calendar, and time both the launch and the promotion to one or two days before the next opening.

Signs you've misread it: (1) the target platform blocks auto-filling soon after launch, as TTD did, and you can't recover with paste assistance. That means form tools like this won't survive a month. (2) After a promotion, installers don't come back for the next opening, which means the tool isn't bringing repeat users and your account isn't growing. (3) A similar tool reaches tens of thousands of users through store search alone, without an existing audience. That means the demand is large enough that people without an account can win, and the idea deserves a fresh look.