Ahmedabad, India: Astrologer Bejan Daruwala has prepared horoscopes of more than 700 players and 32 coaches to predict the winners in the World Cup in Germany and his forecast of the first two quarterfinals was spot on.
"Profiling players and predicting matches are unique value addition for our website," Hemang Pandit, CEO of Daruwala's firm ganeshaspeaks.com, said.
"Before the World Cup, the website had around 15,000 visitors daily. Now the number has increased to about 22,000," Pandit said. "People from as many as 130 countries are visiting the site."
The website predicted ahead of the first two quarterfinals that Germany had 51 per cent chance of beating Argentina while Italy had 54 per cent chance of downing Ukraine.
Both predictions proved to be correct. Germany overcame Argentina on penalties after struggling through extra time. Italy relatively had an easy time as it beat Ukraine 3-0.
Pandit added that it was difficult to quantify the profit in such a short period of time.
"We are looking at a long-term gain and establishing our credibility," he said. The website started making predictions from June 9.
He said correct predictions would help the firm to get more clients.
"We have used moon signs, solar signs as well as Chinese signs for preparing the profiles (horoscope) of players and teams. Seventy-five per cent of our predictions have proved correct," said Maulik Bhatt, a member of the group of astrologers in the firm.
But why were the predictions wrong in 25 per cent cases?
"When we don't have correct dates of birth of players, it affects the accuracy of our predictions," claimed Bhatt.
Predictions are made on the basis of the horoscopes of players (based on their birthdays) and those of teams, which are based on the year the country came into being, when they played the first international match and when they got Fifa affiliation.
