AppsForBharat, the Indian startup in the back of 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 now not most effective devotees but additionally sturdy investor hobby.
Susquehanna Asia Challenge Capital led the Sequence C spherical with participation from present traders, together with Indian billionaire and tech veteran Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership, Elevation Capital, and Top XV Companions.
Spiritual devotion runs deep in India, the place there are 53 temples for each and every 100,000 folks. Just about 2 million Hindu devotees carry out prayers at house 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 just about 2.3% of India’s GDP, in line with a survey via the Indian executive’s Nationwide Pattern Survey Workplace. In spite of this scale, services and products together with prayers and choices are in large part offline, unorganized, and fragmented. AppsForBharat says it’s fixing those demanding situations with Sri Mandir.
Based in November 2020, AppsForBharat offered Sri Mandir in a while after to serve Hindu devotees with on-line prayers and the facility to make choices nearly to Indian temples. The app has garnered over 40 million downloads since its release. Prior to now twelve months, it has enabled 1.2 million devotees to accomplish on-line prayers and make choices at greater than 70 temples throughout India.
These days, Sri Mandir has round 3.5 million per 30 days lively customers, together with about 90,000 from out of doors India. Whilst the app’s consumer base stays essentially home, its moderate earnings in line with consumer (ARPU) in a foreign country is considerably upper — about ₹7,000 (kind of $81), in comparison to ₹600–800 ($7–$9) in India. Particularly, just about 20% of the platform’s earnings comes from the Indian diaspora within the U.S., U.Okay., UAE, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in line with the Bengaluru-based startup.
In the meantime, the selection of registered Sri Mandir customers out of doors India is rising at 15% quarter-over-quarter, attaining 700,000.
Regionally, the app’s Indian consumer base is lightly break up between tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with 30% of customers below the age of 35. Out of doors India, nearly all of customers are women and men elderly 30 and above.
Originally of 2025, Sri Mandir surpassed a $12 million run charge, AppsForBharat founder and CEO Prashant Sachan mentioned in an interview.
The app additionally has a six-month retention charge of kind of 55%, that means that greater than part its customers stay lively six months after first becoming a member of.
“The app has been retentive and number one as a result of those transactions are one thing that the consumer will do all over the yr, a couple of instances a yr,” Sachan advised TechCrunch.
Person habits patterns range via geography. There’s a 20% to twenty-five% overlap between customers in India who do each prayers and make choices during the app. Within the U.S., the app sees an excellent upper overlap, with kind of 50% of its whole consumer base attractive in each actions, as they’re a ways clear of the Indian temples.
Whilst Hindu devotion services and products are in large part offline in India, some temples have begun reside streaming and accepting on-line choices. In reaction, some apps have emerged to tackle Sri Mandir’s good fortune. Then again, Sachan said that the competing apps mixed would account for simply 15% to twenty% of Sri Mandir’s cumulative installs.
Like different on-line platforms, Sri Mandir takes a lower from temples to deliver them on-line. The common take charge is 20% to twenty-five%, but it surely varies according to the services and products introduced. The startup may be progressively introducing pieces equivalent to products from identified temples to extend its revenues past prayer and providing cuts.
Importantly, Sri Mandir additionally is helping building up revenues for temples via 15% to twenty-five% as they draw in extra devotees on-line.
Remains to be the highest Hindu devotional app
The non secular app marketplace has proven enlargement in every single place, however specifically in India. Globally, the highest 10 non secular apps skilled a fifteen% year-over-year building up in per 30 days lively customers right through the primary part of 2025, even with a 2% decline in downloads. India’s non secular app marketplace has outpaced this world pattern, with the highest 10 apps recording 60% enlargement in per 30 days lively customers and 50% building up in downloads.
Mockingly, whilst India’s non secular app marketplace boomed, Sri Mandir misplaced a bit flooring. The app ranked a few of the most sensible 35 non secular apps globally and held the highest place amongst non secular apps in India right through the primary part of 2024. This yr, it dropped to moment position in India, overtaken via LifeChurch.television’s Bible app, which claims to have greater than 80 million moderate per 30 days lively customers globally.
Sri Mandir stays the main Hindu devotional app, on the other hand.
General, non secular tech investment in India reached its height in 2024, attracting $50.5 million that yr on my own, whilst world investment within the house peaked previous in 2021, adopted via a gentle decline, in line with Indian non-public marketplace tracker Tracxn in information shared with TechCrunch. India has accounted for 15% of the whole world funding in non secular tech since 2020, making it the second-largest marketplace after the U.S. relating to investment quantity.
AppsForBharat has emerged because the main startup on this house, having raised $33.4 million ahead of its Sequence C spherical, in line with Tracxn.
“Spiritual tech startups are increasingly more gaining prominence globally, particularly in economies like India, owing to the significance of tradition and faith a few of the demographic, mixed with the upward push in web penetration, virtual bills, and rising adoption of e-commerce, particularly in tier-2–3 towns. We will be expecting this sector to develop additional within the close to long term,” a Tracxn spokesperson mentioned.
With the recent investment, 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 those cities to create logistics and achievement hubs throughout its temple community, managing the supply of meals choices (prasad) and different ritual pieces.
Each and every of those bodily amenities will deal with 40,000 to 50,000 orders and give a contribution to native employment, Sachan mentioned.
Moreover, the startup is improving the consumer enjoy on its app with AI-led options, together with the facility to invite questions on religion, explicit prayers, and fairs, which customers would in most cases ask a clergyman or their elders.
The startup will paintings with subject-matter professionals and deploy safeguards to stop cases of hallucination, the place AI makes up data by itself, Sachan mentioned.
AppsForBharat goals to succeed in profitability via 2027–28 and plans to be able for a public checklist right through that very same window, even if 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 yr and extend its headcount from 300 folks lately, together with 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru, to about 400.
