Sri Mandir keeps investors hooked as digital devotion grows

AppsForBharat, the Indian startup behind the Hindu devotional app Sri Mandir, has raised $20 million in a new round — just over nine months after securing $18 million — as the app continues to attract not only devotees but also strong investor interest.

Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital led the Series C round, with participation from existing investors, including Indian billionaire and tech veteran Nandan Nilekani’s 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 Hindu 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, per a survey by the Indian government’s National Sample Survey Office. Despite this scale, services including prayers and offerings are largely offline, unorganized, and fragmented. AppsForBharat says it’s solving these challenges with Sri Mandir.

Founded in November 2020, AppsForBharat introduced Sri Mandir shortly after to serve Hindu devotees with online prayers and the ability to make offerings virtually to Indian temples. The app has garnered 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 offerings at more than 70 temples across India.

Currently, Sri Mandir has around 3.5 million monthly active users, including about 90,000 from outside India. While the app’s user base remains primarily domestic, its average revenue per user (ARPU) abroad is significantly higher — about ₹7,000 (roughly $81), compared to ₹600-800 ($7-$9) in India. Notably, nearly 20% of the platform’s revenue comes from the Indian diaspora in the U.S., U.K., UAE, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, according to the Bengaluru-based startup.

Meanwhile, the number of registered Sri Mandir users outside India is growing at 15% quarter-over-quarter, reaching 700,000.

Domestically, the app’s Indian user base is evenly split between tier-1 and tier-2 towns, with 30% of users under the age of 35. Outside India, the majority of users are men and women aged 30 and above.

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At the start of 2025, Sri Mandir surpassed a $12 million run rate, AppsForBharat founder and CEO Prashant Sachan said in an interview.

The app also has a six-month retention rate of roughly 55%, meaning that more than half its users remain active six months after first joining.

“The app has been retentive and primary because these transactions are something that the user will do throughout the year, multiple times a year,” Sachan told TechCrunch.

User behavior patterns vary by geography. There is a 20% to 25% overlap between users in India who do both prayers and make offerings through the app. In the U.S., the app sees an even higher overlap, with roughly 50% of its entire user base engaging in both activities, as they are far away from the Indian temples.

While Hindu devotion services are largely offline in India, some temples have begun live streaming and accepting online offerings. In response, some apps have emerged to take on Sri Mandir’s success. However, Sachan stated that the competing apps combined would account for merely 15% to 20% of Sri Mandir’s cumulative installs.

Like other online platforms, Sri Mandir takes a cut from temples to bring them online. The average take rate is 20% to 25%, but it varies based on the services offered. The startup is also gradually introducing items such as merchandise from known temples to expand its revenues beyond prayer and offering cuts.

Importantly, Sri Mandir also helps increase revenues for temples by 15% to 25% as they attract more devotees online.

Continues to be the top Hindu devotional app

The religious app market has shown growth everywhere, but particularly in India. Globally, the top 10 religious apps experienced a 15% year-over-year increase in monthly active users during the first half of 2025, even with a 2% decline in downloads. India’s religious app market has outpaced this global trend, with the top 10 apps recording 60% growth in monthly active users and 50% increase in downloads.

Paradoxically, while India’s religious app market boomed, Sri Mandir lost a little ground. The app ranked among the top 35 religious apps globally and held the top position among religious apps in India during the first half of 2024. This year, it dropped to second place in India, overtaken by LifeChurch.tv’s Bible app, which claims to have more than 80 million average monthly active users globally.

Sri Mandir remains the leading Hindu devotional app, however.

Overall, religious tech funding in India reached its peak in 2024, attracting $50.5 million that year alone, while global funding in the space peaked earlier in 2021, followed by a gradual decline, according to Indian private market tracker Tracxn in data shared with TechCrunch. India has accounted for 15% of the total global investment in religious tech since 2020, making it the second-largest market after the U.S. in terms of funding volume.

AppsForBharat has emerged as the leading startup in this space, having raised $33.4 million before its Series C round, per Tracxn.

“Religious tech startups are increasingly gaining prominence globally, especially in economies like India, owing to the importance of culture and religion among the demographic, combined with the rise in internet penetration, digital payments, and growing adoption of e-commerce, especially in tier-2-3 cities. We can expect this sector to grow further in the near future,” a Tracxn spokesperson said.

With the fresh funding, AppsForBharat plans to invest in over 20 temple towns in India, starting with Varanasi and Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Haridwar in Uttarakhand, and Ujjain in central India’s Madhya Pradesh. The startup will open physical facilities in these towns to create logistics and fulfillment hubs across its temple network, managing the delivery of food offerings (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, the startup is enhancing the user experience on its app with AI-led features, including the ability to ask questions about faith, specific prayers, and festivals, which users would typically ask a priest or their elders.

The startup will work with subject-matter experts and deploy safeguards to prevent instances of hallucination, where AI makes up information on its own, Sachan said.

AppsForBharat aims to achieve profitability by 2027-28 and plans to be ready for a public listing during that same window, although Sachan said he has no definite IPO timeline yet.

In the near term, the startup aims to grow its temple base to 500 this year and expand its headcount from 300 people currently, including 250 at its headquarters in Bengaluru, to about 400.