Technology
Sri Mandir helps Hindus visit holy temples and donate virtually through their phones
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.
Technology
The company is currently developing washing machines for humans
Forget about cold baths. Washing machines for people may soon be a brand new solution.
According to at least one Japanese the oldest newspapersOsaka-based shower head maker Science has developed a cockpit-shaped device that fills with water when a bather sits on a seat in the center and measures an individual’s heart rate and other biological data using sensors to make sure the temperature is good. “It also projects images onto the inside of the transparent cover to make the person feel refreshed,” the power says.
The device, dubbed “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (the human washing machine of the longer term), may never go on sale. Indeed, for now the company’s plans are limited to the Osaka trade fair in April, where as much as eight people will have the option to experience a 15-minute “wash and dry” every day after first booking.
Apparently a version for home use is within the works.
Technology
Zepto raises another $350 million amid retail upheaval in India
Zepto has secured $350 million in latest financing, its third round of financing in six months, because the Indian high-speed trading startup strengthens its position against competitors ahead of a planned public offering next yr.
Indian family offices, high-net-worth individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, maintaining Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agrawal, family offices Mankind Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram’s, Sekhsaria and Kalyan, in addition to stars Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are amongst those backing the brand new enterprise, which is India’s largest fully national primary round.
The funding push comes as Zepto rushes so as to add Indian investors to its capitalization table, with foreign ownership now exceeding two-thirds. TechCrunch first reported on the brand new round’s deliberations last month. The Mumbai-based startup has raised over $1.35 billion since June.
Fast commerce sales – delivering groceries and other items to customers’ doors in 10 minutes – will exceed $6 billion this yr in India. Morgan Stanley predicts that this market shall be value $42 billion by 2030, accounting for 18.4% of total e-commerce and a pair of.5% of retail sales. These strong growth prospects have forced established players including Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa to cut back delivery times as they lose touch with specialized delivery apps.
While high-speed commerce has not taken off in many of the world, the model seems to work particularly well in India, where unorganized retail stores are ever-present.
High-speed trading platforms are creating “parallel trading for consumers seeking convenience” in India, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this month.
Zepto and its rivals – Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Tata-owned BigBasket – currently operate on lower margins than traditional retail, and Morgan Stanley expects market leaders to realize contribution margins of 7-8% and adjusted EBITDA margins to greater than 5% by 2030. (Zepto currently spends about 35 million dollars monthly).
An investor presentation reviewed by TechCrunch shows that Zepto, which handles greater than 7 million total orders every day in greater than 17 cities, is heading in the right direction to realize annual sales of $2 billion. It anticipates 150% growth over the following 12 months, CEO Aadit Palicha told investors in August. The startup plans to go public in India next yr.
However, the rapid growth of high-speed trading has had a devastating impact on the mom-and-pop stores that dot hundreds of Indian cities, towns and villages.
According to the All India Federation of Consumer Products Distributors, about 200,000 local stores closed last yr, with 90,000 in major cities where high-speed trading is more prevalent.
The federation has warned that without regulatory intervention, more local shops shall be vulnerable to closure as fast trading platforms prioritize growth over sustainable practices.
Zepto said it has created job opportunities for tons of of hundreds of gig employees. “From day one, our vision has been to play a small role in nation building, create millions of jobs and offer better services to Indian consumers,” Palicha said in an announcement.
Regulatory challenges arise. Unless an e-commerce company is a majority shareholder of an Indian company or person, current regulations prevent it from operating on a listing model. Fast trading corporations don’t currently follow these rules.
Technology
Wiz acquires Dazz for $450 million to expand cybersecurity platform
Wizardone of the talked about names within the cybersecurity world, is making a major acquisition to expand its reach of cloud security products, especially amongst developers. This is buying Dazzlespecialist in solving security problems and risk management. Sources say the deal is valued at $450 million, which incorporates money and stock.
This is a leap within the startup’s latest round of funding. In July, we reported that Dazz had raised $50 million at a post-money valuation of just below $400 million.
Remediation and posture management – two areas of focus for Dazz – are key services within the cybersecurity market that Wiz hasn’t sorted in addition to it wanted.
“Dazz is a leader in this market, with the best talent and the best customers, which fits perfectly into the company culture,” Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz, said in an interview.
Remediation, which refers to helping you understand and resolve vulnerabilities, shapes how an enterprise actually handles the various vulnerability alerts it could receive from the network. Posture management is a more preventive product: it allows a company to higher understand the scale, shape and performance of its network from a perspective, allowing it to construct higher security services around it.
Dazz will proceed to operate as a separate entity while it’s integrated into the larger Wiz stack. Wiz has made a reputation for itself as a “one-stop shop,” and Rappaport said the integrated offering will proceed to be a core a part of it.
He believes this contrasts with what number of other SaaS corporations are built. In the safety industry, there are, Rappaport said, “a lot of Frankenstein mashups where companies prioritize revenue over building a single technology stack that actually works as a platform.” It could be assumed that integration is much more necessary in cybersecurity than in other areas of enterprise IT.
Wiz and Dazz already had an in depth relationship before this deal. Merat Bahat — the CEO who co-founded Dazz with Tomer Schwartz and Yuval Ofir (CTO and VP of R&D, respectively) — worked closely with Assaf Rappaport at Microsoft, which acquired his previous startup Adallom.
After Rappaport left to found Wiz together with his former Adallom co-founders, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP of Product Yinon Costica and VP of R&D Roy Reznik, Bahat was one in all the primary investors. Similarly, when Bahat founded Dazz, Assaf was a small investor in it.
The connection goes deeper than work colleagues. Bahat and Rappaport are also close friends, and she or he was the second family of Mickey, Rappaport’s beloved dog, referred to as Chief Dog Officer Wiz (together with LinkedIn profile). Once the deal was done, the 2 faced two very sad events: each Bahat and Mika’s mother died.
“We hope for a new chapter of positivity,” Bahat said. The cycle of life does indeed proceed.
Rumors of this takeover began to appear earlier this month; Rappaport confirmed that they then began talking seriously.
But that is not the one M&A conversation Wiz has gotten involved in. Earlier this 12 months, Google tried to buy Wiz itself for $23 billion to construct a major cybersecurity business. Wiz walked away from the deal, which might have been the biggest in Google’s history, partly because Rappaport believed Wiz could turn into a fair larger company by itself terms. And that is what this agreement goals to do.
This acquisition is a test for Wiz, which earlier this 12 months filled its coffers with $1 billion solely for M&A purposes (it has raised almost $2 billion in total, and we hear the subsequent round will close in just a few weeks). . Other offers included purchasing Gem security for $350 million, but Dazz is its largest acquisition ever.
More mergers and acquisitions could also be coming. “We believe next year will be an acquisition year for us,” Rappaport said.
In an interview with TC, Luttwak said that one in all Wiz’s priorities now’s to create more tools for developers that have in mind what they need to do their jobs.
Enterprises have made significant investments in cloud services to speed up operations and make their IT more agile, but this shift has include a significantly modified security profile for these organizations: network and data architectures are more complex and attack surfaces are larger, creating opportunities for malicious hackers to find ways to to hack into these systems. Artificial intelligence makes all of this far more difficult when it comes to malicious attackers. (It’s also a chance: the brand new generation of tools for our defense relies on artificial intelligence.)
Wiz’s unique selling point is its all-in-one approach. Drawing data from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other cloud environments, Wiz scans applications, data and network processes for security risk aspects and provides its users with a series of detailed views to understand where these threats occur, offering over a dozen products covering the areas, corresponding to code security, container environment security, and provide chain security, in addition to quite a few partner integrations for those working with other vendors (or to enable features that Wiz doesn’t offer directly).
Indeed, Wiz offered some extent of repair to help prioritize and fix problems, but as Luttwak said, the Dazz product is solely higher.
“We now have a platform that actually provides a 360-degree view of risk across infrastructure and applications,” he said. “Dazz is a leader in attack surface management, the ability to collect vulnerability signals from the application layer across the entire stack and build the most incredible context that allows you to trace the situation back to engineers to help with remediation.”
For Dazz’s part, once I interviewed Bahat in July 2024, when Dazz raised $50 million at a $350 million valuation, she extolled the virtues of constructing strong solutions and this week said the third quarter was “amazing.”
“But market dynamics are what trigger these types of transactions,” she said. She confirmed that Dazz had also received takeover offers from other corporations. “If you think about the customers and joint customers that we have with Wiz, it makes sense for them to have it on one platform.”
And a few of Dazz’s competitors are still going it alone: Cyera, like Dazz, an authority in attack surface management, just yesterday announced a rise of $300 million at a valuation of $5 billion (which confirms our information). But what’s going to he do with this money? Make acquisitions, after all.
Wiz says it currently has annual recurring revenue of $500 million (it has a goal of $1 billion ARR next 12 months) and has greater than 45% of its Fortune 100 customers. Dazz said ARR is within the tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars and currently growing 500% on a customer base of roughly 100 organizations.
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