AppsForBharat, the Indian startup behind the Hindu devotional app Sri Mandir, has raised $20 million in a brand new spherical — simply over 9 months after securing $18 million — because the app continues to draw not solely devotees but additionally sturdy investor curiosity.
Susquehanna Asia Enterprise Capital led the Sequence C spherical with participation from current buyers, together with Indian billionaire and tech veteran Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership, Elevation Capital, and Peak XV Companions.
Spiritual devotion runs deep in India, the place there are 53 temples for each 100,000 folks. Almost 2 million Hindu devotees carry out prayers at residence with native monks or at temples to hunt peace and well-being. The Hindu temple economic system is price ₹3.02 trillion (about $40 billion) or practically 2.3% of India’s GDP, per a survey by the Indian authorities’s Nationwide Pattern Survey Workplace. Regardless of this scale, providers together with prayers and choices are largely offline, unorganized, and fragmented. AppsForBharat says it’s fixing these challenges with Sri Mandir.
Based in November 2020, AppsForBharat launched Sri Mandir shortly after to serve Hindu devotees with on-line prayers and the power to make choices nearly to Indian temples. The app has garnered over 40 million downloads since its launch. Prior to now 12 months, it has enabled 1.2 million devotees to carry out on-line prayers and make choices at greater than 70 temples throughout India.
Presently, Sri Mandir has round 3.5 million month-to-month energetic customers, together with about 90,000 from outdoors India. Whereas the app’s consumer base stays primarily home, its common income per consumer (ARPU) overseas is considerably greater — about ₹7,000 (roughly $81), in comparison with ₹600–800 ($7–$9) in India. Notably, practically 20% of the platform’s income comes from the Indian diaspora within the U.S., U.Okay., UAE, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in accordance with the Bengaluru-based startup.
Picture Credit:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
In the meantime, the variety of registered Sri Mandir customers outdoors India is rising at 15% quarter-over-quarter, reaching 700,000.
Domestically, the app’s Indian consumer base is evenly break up between tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with 30% of customers underneath the age of 35. Exterior India, nearly all of customers are women and men aged 30 and above.
At first of 2025, Sri Mandir surpassed a $12 million run fee, AppsForBharat founder and CEO Prashant Sachan mentioned in an interview.
The app additionally has a six-month retention fee of roughly 55%, that means that greater than half its customers stay energetic six months after first becoming a member of.
“The app has been retentive and first as a result of these transactions are one thing that the consumer will do all year long, a number of instances a 12 months,” Sachan instructed TechCrunch.
Person conduct patterns fluctuate by geography. There’s a 20% to 25% overlap between customers in India who do each prayers and make choices by the app. Within the U.S., the app sees a good greater overlap, with roughly 50% of its total consumer base participating in each actions, as they’re distant from the Indian temples.
Whereas Hindu devotion providers are largely offline in India, some temples have begun stay streaming and accepting on-line choices. In response, some apps have emerged to tackle Sri Mandir’s success. Nonetheless, Sachan said that the competing apps mixed would account for merely 15% to twenty% of Sri Mandir’s cumulative installs.
Like different on-line platforms, Sri Mandir takes a lower from temples to carry them on-line. The typical take fee is 20% to 25%, however it varies primarily based on the providers provided. The startup can also be step by step introducing gadgets comparable to merchandise from identified temples to develop its revenues past prayer and providing cuts.
Importantly, Sri Mandir additionally helps enhance revenues for temples by 15% to 25% as they entice extra devotees on-line.
Continues to be the highest Hindu devotional app
The non secular app market has proven development in all places, however notably in India. Globally, the highest 10 non secular apps skilled a 15% year-over-year enhance in month-to-month energetic customers through the first half of 2025, even with a 2% decline in downloads. India’s non secular app market has outpaced this international development, with the highest 10 apps recording 60% development in month-to-month energetic customers and 50% enhance in downloads.
Paradoxically, whereas India’s non secular app market boomed, Sri Mandir misplaced just a little floor. The app ranked among the many high 35 non secular apps globally and held the highest place amongst non secular apps in India through the first half of 2024. This 12 months, it dropped to second place in India, overtaken by LifeChurch.television’s Bible app, which claims to have greater than 80 million common month-to-month energetic customers globally.
Picture Credit:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
Sri Mandir stays the main Hindu devotional app, nonetheless.
General, non secular tech funding in India reached its peak in 2024, attracting $50.5 million that 12 months alone, whereas international funding within the house peaked earlier in 2021, adopted by a gradual decline, in accordance with Indian personal market tracker Tracxn in knowledge shared with TechCrunch. India has accounted for 15% of the whole international funding in non secular tech since 2020, making it the second-largest market after the U.S. by way of funding quantity.
AppsForBharat has emerged because the main startup on this house, having raised $33.4 million earlier than its Sequence C spherical, per Tracxn.
Picture Credit:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
“Spiritual tech startups are more and more gaining prominence globally, particularly in economies like India, owing to the significance of tradition and faith among the many demographic, mixed with the rise in web penetration, digital funds, and rising adoption of e-commerce, particularly in tier-2–3 cities. We are able to count on this sector to develop additional within the close to future,” a Tracxn spokesperson mentioned.
With the contemporary funding, AppsForBharat plans to put money into over 20 temple cities in India, beginning with Varanasi and Ayodhya within the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Haridwar in Uttarakhand, and Ujjain in central India’s Madhya Pradesh. The startup will open bodily amenities in these cities to create logistics and success hubs throughout its temple community, managing the supply of meals choices (prasad) and different ritual gadgets.
Every of those bodily amenities will deal with 40,000 to 50,000 orders and contribute to native employment, Sachan mentioned.
Moreover, the startup is enhancing the consumer expertise on its app with AI-led options, together with the power to ask questions on religion, particular prayers, and festivals, which customers would sometimes ask a priest or their elders.
The startup will work with subject-matter specialists and deploy safeguards to forestall cases of hallucination, the place AI makes up data by itself, Sachan mentioned.
AppsForBharat goals to attain profitability by 2027–28 and plans to be prepared for a public itemizing throughout that very same window, though Sachan mentioned he has no particular IPO timeline but.
Within the close to time period, the startup goals to develop its temple base to 500 this 12 months and develop its headcount from 300 folks presently, together with 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru, to about 400.
