Bengaluru-based AppsForBharat—a spiritual-tech company focused on building apps to serve the spiritual and devotional needs of Indian users—announced on Thursday that it has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Elevation Capital with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital India and BEENEXT as well as Matrix Partners India. This round also featured leading angels like Scott Schleifer (partner, Tiger Global), Saurabh Gupta (managing partner, DST Global), Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh (co-founders, ShareChat), Utsav Somani (partner, iSeed), Anshumani Ruddra (group PM, Google), Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal (co-founders, Meesho), and Kunal Shah (founder, CRED).
The company will use the funds raised for creating content IPs, building the product, and hiring talent across the product, data and engineering verticals. Previously, in April 2021, the company had secured $4 million in Seed funding from Sequoia Capital India, BEENEXT, and WEH Ventures.
We are grateful to have such great partners on our journey. As we continue building AppsForBharat, we are putting together a great team that is customer obsessed and approaching it the right way—focussing on user needs as well as driving delight and long-term retention. Our aim is to build products that users love, one that becomes a daily habit for a billion Indians, products that offer happiness and peace. If someone is passionate about building products for such needs, we invite them to join our team,” said Prashant Sachan, founder, AppsForBharat.
Founded in November 2020 by Prashant Sachan, AppsForBharat is a product studio whose aim is to reimagine and digitize the experience of engaging with one’s faith. Spirituality and devotion form a core part of the average Indian’s life (in the physical, offline world)—from praying daily, planning events using almanacs, and reading scriptures, mantras, and horoscopes, to engaging in practices like fasting and meditation and, finally, to celebrate the social and cultural aspects of all festivals and auspicious occasions.
Through AppsForBharat, Sachan’s vision is to build a spiritual-tech company, which specifically addresses this underserved digital and spiritual need of the Indian population, by offering a thoughtful and unique user experience on their smartphones. The apps will attempt to move these large offline behaviors to an online platform with the aim of creating a digital habit. Currently, no other company has attempted to reimagine this space for faith on one’s digital device in such a comprehensive manner, the company claims.
As early investors in multiple contents and social platforms, we have been close witnesses to the need gap for devotional platforms. When we met Prashant and heard his vision behind AppsForBharat, we instantly knew this is a business we want to be partners in. As we spoke to the users, we realized that the product is satisfying the needs of a very wide distribution of audience across age groups, geographic locations, and income brackets. We are really excited about the immense opportunity ahead for the company in building a product that works for a billion-plus people,” added Mayank Khanduja, partner, Elevation Capital.
SriMandir, the first product, aims to be the virtual destination for devotees to create their personalized shrines, consume devotional content, connect with prayer groups, and access a large library of spiritual texts, scriptures, and videos. For more in-depth engagement, users can participate in personalized pravachan (discourses) and virtual satsang, make offerings to temples, and even consult with astrologers and priests.
Going forward, the platform will also include products that will offer exceptional spiritual, devotional, well-being, and meditation-related tools, communities, and services.
