Appsforbharat, the Indian startup behind Hindu dedicated app SRI Mandir, has raised $20 million in just over nine months since securing $18 million as the app continues to attract strong interest not only devotees but investors.
Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital led the Series C round with participation from existing investors including Indian billionaire and tech veteran Nandan Nilekani's basic partnership, Elevation Capital and Peak XV Partners.
Religious devotion is deep in India, with 53 temples for every 100,000 people. Nearly two million Hindu followers pray for peace and happiness at home in local priests and temples. According to a survey by the Indian Government's National Sample Survey Office, the Hindu temple economy is worth 3.02 trillion (approximately $40 billion) or nearly 2.3% of India's GDP. Despite this scale, services that include prayers and offerings are largely offline, unorganized and fragmented. Appsforbharat says it is solving these challenges with Sri Mandir.
Founded in November 2020, Appsforbharat soon introduced Sri Mandir to provide Hindu followers with the ability to pray online and make offerings to temples in virtually India. The app has received over 40 million downloads since its launch. Over the past 12 months, 1.2 million followers have been able to pray online and make offerings in over 70 temples across India.
Currently, SRI Mandir has around 3.5 million monthly active users, including around 90,000 from outside India. The app's user base remains primarily domestic, but in India the average revenue (ARPU) per user abroad is significantly higher, at around 7,000 (approximately $81) compared to £600-800 ($7-$9). In particular, almost 20% of the platform's revenue comes from Indian diasporas in the US, the UK, the UAE, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to the Bengaluru-based startup.
Image credit: Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch
Meanwhile, the number of registered SRI Mandir users outside India has grown at 15% per quarter, reaching 700,000.
Domestic, the app's Indian user base is evenly divided into Tier-1 and Tier-2 towns, with 30% of users under the age of 35 being outside of India, and the majority of users are men and women over the age of 30.
In early 2025, Sri Mandir surpassed the $12 million run rate, Appsforbharat founder and CEO Prashant Sachan said in an interview.
The app also has a 6-month retention rate of approximately 55%. This means that over half of the users remain active six months after their initial participation.
“These transactions were held multiple times a year by users throughout the year, so the app was retained and primary,” Sachan told TechCrunch.
User behavior patterns vary depending on geography. There is a 20-25% overlap among Indian users, making both prayers and what they offer through the app. In the US, the app is seeing even higher overlap, with about 50% of the entire user base engaged in both activities as it is far from Indian temples.
Hindu dedication services are largely offline in India, but some temples have begun accepting live streaming and online services. In response, some apps have appeared to take on the success of SRI Mandir. However, Sachan said that it combines competing apps to only account for 15% to 20% of the accumulated installations of SRI Mandir.
Like other online platforms, Sri Mandir cuts from the temple and brings it online. The average take rate is between 20% and 25%, but varies based on the services offered. Also, startups are gradually introducing items such as known temple products, expanding their income beyond prayer and reductions.
Importantly, Sri Mandir also helps increase temple revenues by 15% to 25%, as it attracts more followers online.
It continues to be a top Hindu prayer app
The religious app market has shown growth everywhere, especially in India. Globally, the top 10 religious apps saw monthly active users increase by 15% year-on-year and downloads fall by 2% in the first half of 2025. The Indian religious app market outpaces this global trend, recording a 60% growth in active users and a 50% increase in downloads each month.
Paradoxically, Sri Mandir lost a bit of ground while the Indian religious app market was booming. The app ranked among the top 35 religious apps worldwide and established its top position among Indian religious apps in the first half of 2024. This year, India came in second place, and the Bible app on LifeChurch.TV has overtaken it.
Image credit: Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch
However, Sri Mandir continues to be a major Hindu prayer app.
Overall, India's religious technology funding peaked in 2024, attracting $50.5 million in that year alone, but global funding in space peaked in early 2021, according to Tracxn, India's private market tracker of data shared with TechCrunch. Since 2020, India has accounted for 15% of global total investment in religious technology, making it the second largest market in terms of capital volume after the US.
Appsforbharat appeared as the leading startup in the space, raising $33.4 million for each Tracxn before the Series C round.
Image credit: Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch
“Coupled with the penetration of the internet, the rise in digital payments, the rise in e-commerce, particularly in tier 2-3 cities, religious technology startups are becoming increasingly noticeable worldwide, especially in an economy like India.
With fresh funding, Appsforbharat will invest in more than 20 temple towns in India starting with Varanasi and Ayodaya in northern Uttar Pradesh, Haridwar in Uttarakhand and Ujain in Madhya Pradesh in central India. The startup opens physical facilities in these towns, creates logistics and fulfillment hubs throughout the temple network, and manages the delivery of food supplies (Prasad) and other ritual items.
Each of these physical facilities will process between 40,000 and 50,000 orders and contribute to local employment, Sachan said.
Additionally, the startup is enhancing the user experience of the app with AIRE LED features, including the ability to ask questions about the faith that users normally ask priests and elders, specific prayers and festivals.
The startup can work with subject experts and deploy safeguards to prevent instances of hallucination where AI is creating information on its own, Sachan said.
Appsforbharat aims to achieve profitability by 2027-28 and is set to be ready for public lists in the same window, but Sachan says there is no clear IPO timeline yet.
Soon, the startup is aiming to grow the temple base to 500 this year, from the current 300 to 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru to around 400.