Appsforbharatthe Indian starting behind the Hindu generous program Sri Mandirraised $ 20 million in a new round – just over nine months later securing $ 18 million – Because the app continues to attract not only devotees but also a strong investment interest.
Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital led the C -Round series with the participation of existing investors, including Indian billionaire and Te Technika veteran Nandan Nilekani Fundamentum Partnership, Elevation Capital, and Peak XV Partners.
Religious devotion runs deep in India, where there are 53 temples for every 100,000 people. Nearly 2 million Indian devotees perform prayers at home with local priests or at temples to seek peace and well -being. The Hindu temple -economy is worth ₹ 3,02 trillion (about $ 40 billion) or nearly 2.3% of India’s GDP, through a survey of the National Sample Office of the Indian Government. Despite this scale, services including prayers and offers are largely offline, unorganized and fragmented. Appsforbharat says it solves these challenges with Sri Mandir.
Founded in November 2020, Appsforbharat introduced Sri Mandir shortly after serving Hindu devotees with online prayers and the ability to make sacrifices almost to Indian temples. The app has gained over 40 million downloads since its launch. In the past 12 months, it has enabled 1.2 million devotees to perform online prayers and make bids at over 70 temples across India.
Currently Sri Mandir has about 3.5 million monthly active users, including about 90,000 from outside India. While the user base of the app remains mainly domestic, its average income per user (ARPU) abroad is significantly higher – around ₹ 7,000 (about $ 81), compared with ₹ 600–800 ($ 7– $ 9) in India. Notably, nearly 20% of the platform’s revenue comes from the Indian diaspora in the United States, Britain, UAE, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to the triggered Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, the number of registered users of Sri Mandir outside India is growing by a 15% quarter of the quarter, reaching 700,000.
At home, the Indian user base of the app is equally shared between Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities, with 30% of users under the age of 35. Outside India, most users are men and women aged 30 and more.
At the beginning of 2025, Sri Mandir exceeded $ 12 million of exchange rate, Appsforbharat founder and general manager Prashant Sachan said in an interview.
The app also has a six-month retaining rate of about 55%, meaning that more than half of its users remain active six months after the first registration.
“The app has been restrained and primary because these transactions are something the user will do throughout the year, many times a year,” Sachan told Techcrunch.
Using behavioral templates vary in geography. There are 20% to 25% overlap among users in India who make both prayers and make offers through the app. In the United States, the app sees an even higher overlap, with about 50% of its total user base engaged in both activities, as they are far from the Indian temples.
While Hindu generous services are mostly offline in India, some temples have started live streaming and accepting online offers. In response, some programs have appeared to take on the success of Sri Mandir. However, Sachan stated that the competitive programs will be accounted for only 15% to 20% of Sri Mandir’s cumulative facilities.
Like other online platforms, Sri Mandir takes a cut of temples to bring them online. The average capture rate is 20% to 25%, but it varies according to the services offered. The launch also gradually introduces items as merchandise of known temples to expand their income beyond prayer and offering cuts.
Seriously, Sri Mandir also helps increase revenue for temples from 15% to 25% as they attract more devotees online.
Is still the highest Hindu generous program
The religious app market has shown growth everywhere, but especially in India. Worldwide, the top 10 religious programs have undergone a 15% annual increase in monthly active users during the first half of 2025, even with a 2% decline in downloads. India’s religious app’s market has exceeded this global trend, with the top 10 programs recording 60% growth in monthly active users and 50% increase in downloads.
Paradoxically, while the religious app market grew, Sri Mandir lost some land. The app ranked among the top 35 religious programs worldwide and occupied the highest position among religious programs in India during the first half of 2024. This year, it dropped to second place in India, passed by the lifelian biblical app, which claims to have more than 80 million average monthly users.
Sri Mandir, however, remains the main Hindu generous app.
Overall, religious technological funding in India reached its peak in 2024, attracting $ 50.5 million that year alone, while global funding in space peaked earlier in 2021, followed by a gradual decline, according to an Indian private market tracker tracker in data shared with Techcrunch. India represented 15% of the total global investment in religious technology since 2020, making it the second largest market after the United States in terms of financial volume.
Appsforbharat appeared as the main startup in this space, earning $ 33.4 million before its C -round series, via Traxn.
“Religious Technic companies are becoming more and more inclined to worldwide, especially in economies such as India, due to the importance of culture and religion between demographics, combined with the rise of online penetration, digital payments and increasing adoption of e-commerce, especially in Tier-2-3 cities.
With the recent funding, Appsforbharat plans to invest in more than 20 temple cities in India, starting from Varanasi and Ayodhya in the northern Uttar state, Pradesh, Haridwar in Uttarakhand, and Ujjain in Madhya pradesh from Central India. The launch will open physical facilities in these cities to create logistics and executive hubs through its temple, managing supply of food offers (Prasad) and other ritual items.
Each of these physical facilities will handle 40,000 to 50,000 orders and contribute to local employment, Sachan said.
Additionally, starting improves the user’s experience in their app with AI-guided functions, including the ability to ask questions about trust, specific prayers and festivals that users would typically ask a priest or their seniors.
The startup will work with topics experts and deploy securities to prevent hallucination cases, where AI constitutes information himself, Sachan said.
Appsforbharat aims to achieve profitable by 2027–28 and plans to be ready for public listing during that same window, although Sachan said he has not yet had a definite IPO timeline.
In the near term, the starting aims to grow its temple base to 500 this year and expand its main area of 300 people currently, including 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru, up to about 400.
