While dwelling within the U.S., the Trivedi household was in search of an answer to comply with a ritual apply of worshiping at one in every of India’s Jyotirlingas — a holy illustration of the Hindu god Shiva. After looking on YouTube for tactics to supply flowers and different gadgets ceremonially on the Indian temple one Sunday in 2023, the household discovered a video about an rising devotional app referred to as Sri Mandir.
The app provides custom-made movies of ceremonial prayers from greater than 50 Hindu temples in India and permits customers to take part in prayers, supply donations, and entry devotional content material nearly from their iPhone or Android smartphone. That’s precisely what the Trivedi household was in search of.
It’s been a couple of yr, and the Trivedis are nonetheless utilizing Sri Mandir. One member of the family informed TechCrunch that the app helps customers do last-minute prayers and donate cash to the temple of their religion, even whereas residing removed from their house nation and has entry to native temples and clergymen. But it comes with a reasonably excessive value: The common month-to-month spend on Sri Mandir outdoors India is $100.
“Sri Mandir simply interprets rupees into {dollars} and prices an entire lot of cash, which makes it an ultra-premium app, not for everybody with a low price range,” the person mentioned.
The app faucets right into a rising want. As a part of their years-old rituals, Hindus worldwide usually go to temples of the gods and goddesses they comply with, supply donations, and take part in prayers seeking peace, well-being, or higher relationships. However, entry to devotional providers and non secular data largely had been largely offline and unorganized in India.
Serial entrepreneur Prashant Sachan, who comes from a village close to Uttar Pradesh’s industrial metropolis Kanpur and beforehand co-founded social commerce startup Trell, based Sri Mandir’s dad or mum firm, AppsForBharat, in November 2020. He was seeing even individuals from rural India starting to come back on-line, however seen nation’s devotional practices remained steadfastly offline.
“When I began experimenting, devotion was one habits that I began occupied with as a result of we thought this deserved the sort of consideration that it hasn’t gotten,” Sachan mentioned in an interview.
The three-year-old app boasts greater than 30 million downloads since 2020, and simply opened its entry to markets outdoors India in January. Since then, Sachan informed TechCrunch, the app has grown 25% to 30% month-on-month and garnered 500,000 registered customers and a couple of.5 million installs outdoors India. Most of its world viewers comes from the U.S., adopted by Canada, the U.Ok. and the Middle East.
Sachan mentioned the principle customers of Sri Mandir outdoors India are first and second-generation Indian-Americans who don’t usually go to temples in India however need to connect with their roots.
This world footprint has helped Sri Mandir develop its revenues, which it generates from the small-ticket transactions customers make by means of the app by providing prayers and donations. Currently, 25% Sri Mandir’s whole income comes from outdoors India.
Alongside enabling customers to attach with the temples of their religion, Sri Mandir helps clergymen in these temples get extra devotees, finally permitting them to earn more cash. By dedicating 5 to 6 hours every week to the app, a priest usually makes about 25% to 30% greater than their common revenue from each day operations.
Manoj, a priest at Trimbakeshwar Shiva temple, situated within the city of Trimbak in India’s western state of Maharashtra, informed TechCrunch that Sri Mandir helps devotees, even those that aren’t bodily match however eager to take part in occasional prayers.
The priest will get 40 to 50 devotees by means of the Sri Mandir app weekly. He famous that the app additionally helps clergymen get extra funds from devotees — the app fees particular person customers even for group prayers, whereas teams visiting the temple in particular person could not all pay individually. Manoj acknowledged, nevertheless, that it lacks the divine vibe that folks get by bodily being at a temple. He in contrast it to the distinction between taking medicines at house and getting full therapy after being admitted to a hospital.
AppsForBharat now hopes to assist Sri Mandir attain extra much more customers. The Bengaluru-based startup has raised $18M in a Series B spherical led by Indian billionaire and tech veteran Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership.
The most downloaded app for Hindus
Sri Mandir will not be alone available in the market of devotional apps within the nation: DevDham, Vama.app and Utsav supply comparable choices.
Nonetheless, with 30 million downloads since 2020, Sri Mandir is the one Hindu-focused app among the many prime 100 most downloaded devotional apps on the earth, in line with Sensor Tower knowledge shared solely with TechCrunch.
Bhagavad Gita in Hindi (2 million downloads) and Sanatan (2 million) are the opposite most downloaded world Hindu devotional apps since 2020, per Sensor Tower.
That mentioned, Sri Mandir is much behind globally in essentially the most downloaded devotional apps. According to Sensor Tower, YouVersion Bible App (274 million downloads), Muslim Pro (132 million downloads), and King James Bible (122 million downloads) had been the highest three devotional apps since 2014.
Within India, Bible App for Kids (22 million downloads) and Muslim Pro (10 million downloads) are the 2 different most downloaded devotional apps — each trailing Sri Mandir.
On the revenues entrance, Hallow Prayer & Meditation is the highest-grossing app worldwide since 2020, the place shoppers have spent over $84 million on in-app purchases, per Sensor Tower. Sri Mandir, alternatively, has garnered lower than $100,000 in in-app purchases since 2020, in line with Sensor Tower.
This is decrease than the primary devotional app in India by client spending, the Joseph Prince Gospel Partner app, which has acquired over $300,000 in in-app purchases in India since 2020.
Next up: Relgious tourism
With its newest funding spherical, AppsForBharat plans so as to add options with the purpose of capturing 5% to 10% of what it believes is a $50 billion potential market.
One of them is non secular tourism by means of Sri Mandir.
Sachan informed TechCrunch the startup plans assist customers make plans to go to temples and pilgrimage websites by means of its platform, partly by hanging partnerships with conventional journey aggergators. The govt mentioned that non secular tourism pilots have already began with a choose group of devotees.
The app can even facilitate particular tickets for visiting sacred shrines and delivering prasad (meals choices to idols) and associated devotional items.
Further, the startup plans to construct “a fancy tech stack” with a CRM-like expertise for temples and historic locations in India. These providers will initially be obtainable totally free, however the firm finally plans to cost them for managing these providers, Sachan mentioned.
The startup additionally intends to develop its temple community 10x, to 500 temples, within the subsequent 12 to 18 months.
The firm’s all-equity Series B spherical additionally noticed participation from Susquehanna Asia VC, in addition to AppsForBharat’s present buyers: Elevation Capital, Mirae Asset VC and Peak XV.
