Sri Mandir keeps investors hooked as digital devotion grows

AppsforbharatThe Indian startup behind the Hindu devotional app Sri MandirCollected 20 million US dollars in a new round – a little more than nine months later Secure $ 18 million – Since the app continues to attract not only trailers, but also a strong investor interest.

Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital led the series C with participation of existing investors, including the Indian billionaire and the Tech veteran Nandan Nilekanis Foundation Partnership, Elevation Capital and Peak XV Partners.

The religious devotion takes deep in India, where there are 53 temples for 100,000 people each. At home, almost 2 million Hindu supporters perform prayers with local priests or temples to look for peace and well-being. The Hindu Temple Management is worth 3.02 trillion pounds (approx. 40 billion US dollars) or almost 2.3% of Indian GDP, according to a survey of the national sampling agency of the Indian government. Despite this size, the services including prayers and offer are largely offline, disorganized and fragmented. Appsforbharat says that it solves these challenges with Sri Mandir.

Appsforbharat was founded in November 2020 and shortly afterwards Sri Mandir presented to serve Hindu supporters with online prayers and the ability to make the Indian temples practical. The app has received over 40 million downloads since its introduction. In the past 12 months, it has made it possible to carry out 1.2 million followers to carry out online prayers and make offers for more than 70 temples across India.

Sri Mandir currently has around 3.5 million active users per month, including around 90,000 from outside of India. While the app’s user base remains primarily domestic, the average turnover per user (ARPU) abroad is significantly higher -around 7,000 GBP (approximately 81 US dollars), compared to 600 to 800 GBP (7 to 9 US dollars) in India. Remarkably, according to the startup based in Bengaluru, almost 20% of the turnover of the platform from the Indian diaspora in the USA, Great Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In the meantime, the number of registered SRI Mandir users outside India is growing with a quarterly 15% quarter and reaches 700,000.

In Germany, the Indian user base of the app is evenly divided between animal 1 and animal 2 cities. 30% of users under the age of 35. Outside of India, most users are men and women aged 30 years.

At the beginning of 2025, Sri Mandir exceeded a run of 12 million US dollars, the founder and CEO of Appsforbharat, Prashann Sachan, said in an interview with.

The app also has a six -month retention rate of around 55%, which means that more than half of the users remain active six months after the first accession.

“The app was in front of and primarily because these transactions are something that the user will carry out several times a year all year round,” Sachan told Techcrunch.

User behavior patterns vary depending on geography. There is an overlap of 20% to 25% between users in India who make prayers and offerings about the app. In the USA, the app sees an even higher overlap, with around 50% of the total user base operating both activities because they are far from the Indian temples.

While the Hindu -Hingabe services in India are largely offline, some temples have started to stream and accept online offers. In response to this, some apps were created to take on Sri Mandir’s success. However, Sachan explained that the combined competing apps would only make up 15 to 20% of Sri Mandir’s cumulative installations.

Like other online platforms, Sri Mandir takes a cut from temples to bring them online. The average tariff course is 20% to 25%, but varies depending on the services offered. The startup gradually introduces objects such as goods from known temples to expand its income beyond prayer and offer cuts.

It is important that Sri Mandir also helps to increase the income for temples by 15 to 25% because they attract more trailers online.

Is still the top Hindu devotional app

The religious app market has shown growth everywhere, especially in India. Worldwide, the top 10 religious apps in 2025 recorded an increase in monthly active users of 15% compared to the previous year, even with a decline in downloads by 2%. India’s religious app market has exceeded this global trend, whereby the top 10 apps for growth of 60% in monthly active users and an increase in download are 50%.

Paradoxically, Sri Mandir lost a small floor, while India’s religious app market was booming. The app was one of the 35 religious apps worldwide and had the top position among religious apps in India in the first half of 2024. This year she fell to second place in India in India, outdated by Lifechurch.tv’s Bible app, which claims to have more than 80 million average monthly users worldwide.

However, Sri Mandir remains the leading Hindu devotion app.

Overall, the religious tech financing in India reached its peak in 2024 and attracted 50.5 million US dollars this year alone, while global financing in the early 2021 room reached a climax, followed by a gradual decline, according to the Indian private market tracker Tracxn into data that was shared with Techcrunch. India has made 15% of global global investments in religious technology since 2020, making it the second largest market after the United States in terms of financing volume.

Appsforbharat has developed in this area as a leading startup after collecting 33.4 million US dollars in front of the series -C round per tracxn.

“Startups of religious tech are becoming increasingly important worldwide, especially in economies such as India, due to the importance of culture and religion in the demographic population in combination with the increase in internet penetration, digital payments and the increasing acceptance of e-commerce, especially in animal-2-3 cities.

With the new financing, Appsforbharat is planning to invest in over 20 temple cities in India, starting with Varanasi and Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Haridwar in Uttarakhand and Ujjain in Central India in Madhya Pradesh. The startup will open physical facilities in these cities to create logistics and fulfillment hubs in its Temple network and manage the delivery of food offers (prasad) and other ritual objects.

Each of these physical facilities will take over 40,000 to 50,000 orders and contribute to local employment, said Sachan.

In addition, the startup improves the user experience in its app with AI-led functions, including the possibility of believing questions, specific prayers and festivals that users would normally ask a priest or their oldest questions.

The startup will work with experts for specialist companies and use protective measures to prevent cases of hallucination in which AI itself makes information, said Sachan.

Appsforbharat aims to achieve profitability by 2027–28 and plans to be ready for a public list during the same window, although Sachan said he still has no clear IPO time bar.

In the short term, the startup aims to expand its temple base to 500 this year and to expand its currently 300 people, including 250 in his headquarters in Bengaluru, to around 400.