Team Startupcity

• AppsForBharat raised $20 million in Series C funding, led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with participation from existing investors like Fundamentum, Elevation Capital, and Peak XV Partners.
• Funds will be used to expand across 20 temple towns, build fulfillment hubs, hire locally, and enhance AI features like a virtual family pandit to guide users through personalized rituals.
• Sri Mandir app sees rising global demand, with 20% of users from the Indian diaspora and 7% paying for devotional services like online pujas and offerings.

AppsForBharat, the Bengaluru-based parent company of devotional app Sri Mandir, has raised Rs 175 crore (approximately $20 million) in a Series C funding round led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital. The round also saw participation from existing investors, including Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum, Elevation Capital, and Peak XV Partners, reaffirming their confidence in the company’s vision to digitize devotional experiences at scale.

This latest infusion of capital comes at a time when the demand for online puja services and spiritual content has soared, especially in the post-pandemic world. Platforms like Sri Mandir have seen increased traction not only from Indian users but also from the global Indian diaspora, driving AppsForBharat to scale both its digital infrastructure and physical logistics.

Founder and CEO Prashant Sachan outlined ambitious growth plans with the newly raised capital. “With this fundraise, we are entering the next phase of growth scaling temple partnerships, improving digital infrastructure for temples, and building AI capabilities to serve our users better”, he told Moneycontrol.

The company plans to expand operations across 20 temple towns including spiritual hotspots like Ayodhya, Varanasi, Ujjain, and Haridwar. A portion of the funds will be directed towards setting up service fulfillment hubs in these towns, boosting local hiring, and streamlining the delivery of ritual-related products such as prasad and charhawa (offerings), which were earlier managed informally.

“In the last 12 months, 12 lakh devotees have done pujas and charhawas 52 lakh times on our platform”, Sachan revealed. “Our key business metrics have doubled in the last six months”.

A significant part of the expansion strategy involves the deployment of AI-led features. The company is currently piloting an AI agent that functions like a digital family pandit guiding users through rituals and spiritual practices personalized by region, language, community, and faith. This virtual assistant draws from AppsForBharat’s proprietary content repository, one of the largest verified devotional content libraries built over the past four years.

“We’re not building foundational models”, Sachan clarified, “but this AI agent uses our internal knowledge base to provide context-aware devotional assistance. It’s currently in limited release and should roll out to the public within a month”.

The Sri Mandir app operates on a freemium model, offering basic spiritual services for free while monetizing through paid rituals. Currently, about 7 percent of its users pay for services such as virtual pujas and offerings. The app also boasts a growing global user base, with nearly 20 percent of its demand coming from NRIs in countries like the US, UK, UAE, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

“Our operations are in India, but we’re acquiring users globally”, said Sachan. “They engage with our services like online puja from anywhere in the world".

On the employment front, the company expects to generate 500-1,000 jobs or gig opportunities over the next couple of years through its fulfillment hubs. “Each hub will employ 10–20 locals, offering opportunities in areas traditionally underrepresented in the tech ecosystem,” Sachan added.

While AppsForBharat is exploring new product lines, it is steering clear of crowded spaces like astrology marketplaces. “We’re not interested in pay-per-minute astrology consultations. Instead, we offer free services like Kundli generation and daily horoscope analysis”, Sachan said.

The company’s previous funding round was an $18 million Series B in 2024, and SIG, a small investor from that round, has significantly increased its stake in the latest round. “We had more offers on the table but chose to raise a modest round with our existing backers as we were dilution sensitive”, said Sachan.

Looking ahead, two of India’s top ten temples are expected to join the platform, marking a significant milestone in AppsForBharat’s mission to build trust and scale within a traditionally fragmented and low-trust faith-tech ecosystem.

“Devotion is deeply personal, but it’s also a low-trust space”, Sachan reflected. “But when people try our service once when they receive a Prasad box from a temple they come back. That’s where the trust begins”.