Sri Mandir retains buyers hooked as digital devotion grows

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 in addition sturdy investor curiosity.

Susquehanna Asia Enterprise Capital led the Collection C spherical with participation from present 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 residence with native clergymen or at temples to hunt peace and well-being. The Hindu temple financial 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, companies 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 flexibility 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 lively 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 larger — 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.Ok., UAE, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in response to the Bengaluru-based startup.

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 cut up between tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with 30% of customers below the age of 35. Exterior India, the vast majority of customers are women and men aged 30 and above.

Initially 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%, which means that greater than half its customers stay lively 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 yr,” Sachan instructed TechCrunch.

Person conduct patterns differ 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 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 companies 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 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 reduce from temples to convey them on-line. The typical take fee is 20% to 25%, however it varies based mostly on the companies supplied. The startup can be steadily introducing objects comparable to merchandise from identified temples to increase its revenues past prayer and providing cuts.

Importantly, Sri Mandir additionally helps improve revenues for temples by 15% to 25% as they entice extra devotees on-line.

Continues to be the highest Hindu devotional app

The spiritual app market has proven progress all over the place, however notably in India. Globally, the highest 10 spiritual apps skilled a 15% year-over-year improve in month-to-month lively 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 international development, with the highest 10 apps recording 60% progress in month-to-month lively customers and 50% improve in downloads.

Paradoxically, whereas India’s spiritual app market boomed, Sri Mandir misplaced just a little floor. The app ranked among the many prime 35 spiritual apps globally and held the highest place amongst spiritual apps in India in the course of the first half of 2024. This yr, 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 lively customers globally.

Sri Mandir stays the main Hindu devotional app, nevertheless.

General, spiritual tech funding in India reached its peak in 2024, attracting $50.5 million that yr alone, whereas international funding within the area peaked earlier in 2021, adopted by a gradual decline, in response to Indian non-public market tracker Tracxn in knowledge shared with TechCrunch. India has accounted for 15% of the full international 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 area, having raised $33.4 million earlier than its Collection C spherical, per Tracxn.

“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 are able to count on this sector to develop additional within the close to future,” a Tracxn spokesperson mentioned.

With the recent 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 services in these cities to create logistics and achievement hubs throughout its temple community, managing the supply of meals choices (prasad) and different ritual objects.

Every of those bodily services 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 flexibility 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 consultants and deploy safeguards to stop cases of hallucination, the place AI makes up info 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 yr and increase its headcount from 300 folks presently, together with 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru, to about 400.