Appsforbharatthe Indian startup behind the Hindu devotional app Sri mandirhas 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 in addition robust investor curiosity.
Susquehanna Asia Enterprise Capital led the Collection 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.
Non secular devotion runs deep in India, the place there are 53 temples for each 100,000 folks. Practically 2 million Hindu devotees carry out prayers at dwelling with native clergymen or at temples to hunt peace and well-being. The Hindu temple economic system is value ₹3.02 trillion (about $40 billion) or almost 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 just about to Indian temples. The app has garnered over 40 million downloads since its launch. Previously 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 exterior India. Whereas the app’s consumer base stays primarily home, its common income per consumer (ARPU) overseas is considerably larger — about ₹7,000 (roughly $81), in comparison with ₹600–800 ($7–$9) in India. Notably, almost 20% of the platform’s income comes from the Indian diaspora within the U.S., U.Okay., UAE, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in keeping with the Bengaluru-based startup.
Picture Credit:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
In the meantime, the variety of registered Sri Mandir customers exterior India is rising at 15% quarter-over-quarter, reaching 700,000.
Domestically, the app’s Indian consumer base is evenly cut up between tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with 30% of customers underneath the age of 35. Outdoors India, the vast majority of customers are women and men aged 30 and above.
At the beginning of 2025, Sri Mandir surpassed a $12 million run price, AppsForBharat founder and CEO Prashant Sachan mentioned in an interview.
The app additionally has a six-month retention price of roughly 55%, which 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 informed TechCrunch.
Person habits patterns differ by geography. There’s a 20% to 25% overlap between customers in India who do each prayers and make choices by means of the app. Within the U.S., the app sees an excellent larger overlap, with roughly 50% of its whole 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 reside streaming and accepting on-line choices. In response, some apps have emerged to tackle Sri Mandir’s success. Nonetheless, Sachan acknowledged 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 price is 20% to 25%, however it varies primarily based on the providers supplied. The startup can be steadily introducing gadgets akin to merchandise from identified temples to broaden its revenues past prayer and providing cuts.
Importantly, Sri Mandir additionally helps improve revenues for temples by 15% to 25% as they appeal to extra devotees on-line.
Continues to be the highest Hindu devotional app
The spiritual app market has proven development in every single place, however significantly in India. Globally, the highest 10 spiritual apps skilled a 15% year-over-year improve in month-to-month energetic customers in the course of the first half of 2025, even with a 2% decline in downloads. India’s spiritual app market has outpaced this world pattern, with the highest 10 apps recording 60% development in month-to-month energetic customers and 50% improve in downloads.
Paradoxically, whereas India’s spiritual app market boomed, Sri Mandir misplaced a little bit floor. The app ranked among the many high 35 spiritual apps globally and held the highest place amongst spiritual apps in India in the course of 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.
Total, spiritual tech funding in India reached its peak in 2024, attracting $50.5 million that 12 months alone, whereas world funding within the house peaked earlier in 2021, adopted by a gradual decline, in keeping with Indian non-public market tracker Tracxn in information shared with TechCrunch. India has accounted for 15% of the entire world funding in spiritual 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 Collection C spherical, per Tracxn.
Picture Credit:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
“Non secular 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 will anticipate this sector to develop additional within the close to future,” a Tracxn spokesperson mentioned.
With the contemporary funding, AppsForBharat plans to spend money on 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 usually ask a priest or their elders.
The startup will work with subject-matter specialists and deploy safeguards to forestall situations of hallucination, the place AI makes up data by itself, Sachan mentioned.
AppsForBharat goals to realize 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 broaden its headcount from 300 folks at the moment, together with 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru, to about 400.
