The success of this low-budget film and media reports of the "sudden emergence of a modern celluloid goddess" resulted in scholarly interest in Santoshi Mata.

[3] It was the wife of Vijay Sharma, the director of Jai Santoshi Maa, who urged her husband to "spread the goddess's message".

[3][4] As her film brought her to life, Santoshi Ma quickly became one of the most important and widely worshiped goddesses in India, taking her place in poster-art form in the altar rooms of millions of Hindu homes.

[...] Yet it is hard to conceive that Santoshi Ma could have granted such instant satisfaction to so many people had she not been part of a larger and already well-integrated culture of the Goddess.

Her new devotees could immediately recognize many of her characteristic moods and attributes, and feel them deeply, because she shared them with other goddesses long since familiar to them.

Santoshi Mata's characteristic posture standing or sitting on a lotus mirrored that of the goddess Lakshmi (Shri).

The fact that Santoshi Mata expected the inexpensive raw sugar and roasted chickpeas—associated with the "non-elite"—as offerings in her vrata and her benevolent nature made her popular with the masses.

The devotee should perform a puja (worship) of Santoshi Mata and offer her flowers, incense and a bowl of raw sugar and roasted chickpeas (gur-chana).

When the wish is granted, a devotee must then organize an udyapan ("bringing to conclusion") ceremony, where eight boys are to be served a festive meal.

By means of this vrata one can live with harmony because the bad habits in human life like ignoring faith in God, stating falsehoods, behaving arrogantly, etc., can be removed.

In the udyapan ceremony of the vrata, the in-laws plotted against the wife and served sour food to the eight boys, offending Santoshi Mata.

A. K. Ramanujan calls this tale with nameless characters as "the most interior kind of folktales: those generally told by women within domestic spaces."

The vrata katha also does not associate the goddess with Ganesha—the god of obstacle removal and beginnings, who is described as her father in the film and other devotee literature.

[1] The film Jai Santoshi Maa links the birth of Santoshi Mata to the festival of Raksha Bandhan, where a sister ties a rakhi (a type of string bracelet) on her brother's wrist and, in return, the brother gifts his sister sweets, gifts and a promise of eternal protection.

Narada declares that this mind-born daughter of Ganesha will always fulfil everyone’s desires and, thus, would be called Santoshi Maa, the Mother of Happiness or Satisfaction.

[1][5] The film then shifts from the heavenly abode of Ganesha to the earth, where the story of the goddess' devotee Satyavati is told.

At the udayan ceremony, Satyavati's sisters-in-law mix sour food in the ritual meal, to be served to eight boys.