Living within the U.S., the Trivedi family sought a technique to follow the ritual practice of worshipping one among India’s Jyotirlingas, a sacred image of the Hindu god Shiva. After searching YouTube for tactics to ceremonially offer flowers and other items at an Indian temple on Sunday 2023, the family found a video about an upcoming worship app called Sri Mandir.

The app offers customized videos of ceremonial prayers from greater than 50 Hindu temples in India and lets users take part in prayers, donate and access religious content virtually from their iPhone or Android smartphone. It was just what the Trivedis were searching for.

A yr later, the Trivedis proceed to make use of Sri Mandir. A member of the family told TechCrunch that the app helps users make last-minute prayers and donate money to their faith’s temple, even in the event that they live removed from their home country and have access to local temples and priests. But that comes at a steep cost: the typical monthly cost of a Sri Mandir outside India is $100.

“Sri Mandir simply converts rupees to dollars and costs a ton of money, making it an ultra-premium app and not for anyone on a budget,” the user said.

The app fills a growing need. As a part of their long-standing rituals, Hindus world wide often visit temples of the gods and goddesses they worship, make offerings, and take part in prayers seeking peace, well-being, or higher relationships. However, access to spiritual services and information in India has been largely inaccessible and unorganized.

Serial entrepreneur Prashant Sachan, who hails from a village near the economic city of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and previously co-founded social commerce startup Trell, founded Sri Mandir’s parent company, AppsForBharat, in November 2020. He saw that even people in rural India were getting online, but noticed that religious practices within the country remained largely offline.

“When I first started experimenting, devotion was one of the behaviors I started thinking about because we felt it deserved attention that it wasn’t getting,” Sachan said in an interview.

The three-year-old app boasts over 30 million downloads since 2020 and only opened as much as markets outside India in January. Since then, Sachan told TechCrunch, the app has grown by 25% to 30% per thirty days and has gained 500,000 registered users and 2.5 million installs outside India. The majority of its global audience comes from the United States, followed by Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Middle East.

Sachan said Sri Mandir’s primary users outside India are first- and second-generation Indian-Americans who don’t often visit temples in India but wish to connect with their roots.

This global reach has helped Sri Mandir increase the revenue it generates from small transactions made by users through the app, offering prayers and donations. Today, 25% of Sri Mandir’s total revenue comes from outside India.

In addition to connecting users to temples of their faith, Sri Mandir helps the priests at those temples gain more followers, which ultimately allows them to earn more cash. By dedicating five to 6 hours per week to the app, a priest typically earns about 25% to 30% greater than his regular income from day-to-day operations.

Manoj, a priest on the Trimbakeshwar Shiva Temple in town of Trimbak within the western Indian state of Maharashtra, told TechCrunch that the Sri Mandir helps devotees, even those that should not in good physical shape but are willing to participate in occasional prayers.

The priest receives 40 to 50 devotions per week through the Sri Mandir app. He noted that the app also helps the priests receive more payments from the devotions—the app charges individual users even for group prayers, while groups visiting the temple in person may not pay individually. But Manoj admitted that it lacks the divine atmosphere that folks experience after they are physically present on the temple. He compared it to the difference between taking medication at home and receiving full treatment after being admitted to the hospital.

AppsForBharat now hopes to assist Sri Mandir reach much more users. The Bengaluru-based startup has raised $18 million in a Series B funding round led by Indian billionaire and tech veteran Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership.

The most downloaded app by Indians

Sri Mandir shouldn’t be the one app offering such content within the country: DevDham, Vama.app and Utsav offer similar offerings.

Still, with 30 million downloads since 2020, Sri Mandir is the one Hindu-focused app among the many 100 most downloaded religious apps globally, in response to Sensor Tower data shared exclusively with TechCrunch.

Bhagavad Gita in Hindi (2 million downloads) and Sanatan (2 million) are the subsequent most downloaded Hindu religious prayer apps on the planet as of 2020, in response to Sensor Tower data.

Still, Sri Mandir is much behind the world in probably the most downloaded religious apps. According to Sensor Tower, YouVersion Bible App (274 million downloads), Muslim Pro (132 million downloads) and King James Bible (122 million downloads) were the highest three religious apps as of 2014.

In India, Bible App for Kids (22 million downloads) and Muslim Pro (10 million downloads) are the opposite two most downloaded religious apps, each trailing Sri Mandir.

In terms of revenue, Hallow Prayer & Meditation is the world’s highest-grossing app as of 2020, with consumers spending greater than $84 million on in-app purchases, in response to Sensor Tower. On the opposite hand, Sri Mandir has earned lower than $100,000 in in-app purchases since 2020, in response to Sensor Tower.

This is lower than the most well-liked religious app in India by consumer spending, Joseph Prince Gospel Partner, which has earned over $300,000 in in-app purchases in India since 2020.

Next: Religious Tourism

With the newest round of funding, AppsForBharat plans so as to add features that aim to capture 5% to 10% of the potential market, which is estimated to be value $50 billion.

One of them is religious tourism through Sri Mandir.

Sachan told TechCrunch that the startup plans to assist users plan visits to temples and pilgrimage sites through the platform, partly by partnering with traditional travel agencies. The executive said pilot programs for religious tourism have already begun with a select group of devotees.

The app may also permit you to purchase special tickets to visit holy sites and deliver prasad (food offerings to idols) and related religious goods.

In addition, the startup plans to construct a “complex technology stack” with a CRM-like experience for temples and historical sites in India. These services will initially be available without cost, but the corporate eventually plans to charge fees to administer these services, Sachan said.

The startup also goals to expand its temple network tenfold, to 500 temples, over the subsequent 12 to 18 months.

The Series B funding round, during which the corporate participated solely with equity, was also attended by Susquehanna Asia VC, in addition to existing investors of AppsForBharat: Elevation Capital, Mirae Asset VC and Peak XV.