AppsForBharat raises $18 million in Series B funding led by Nandan Nilekani's Fundamentum

Prashant Sachan, founder of AppsForBharat

AppsForBharat, the parent company of India's devotion platform, Sri Mandir, has raised $18 million in a Series B funding led by Nandan Nilekani-led Fundamentum, the firm announced on September 10.

The round also saw participation from Susquehanna Asia VC as well as existing investors Elevation Capital, Peak XV, and Mirae Asset VC.

Moneycontrol broke the news of the development in May 2024.

The firm said in a statement that the funds will be utilised to scale the Sri Mandir app’s India and international operations, onboard new temples, launch new services, and build a comprehensive tech stack for the devotional ecosystem.

"Today we have 50 temples on our platform. We want to 10x it in the next 12 to 18 months.  Launch new services like spiritual and devotional experiences. And the last part is, we want build a comprehensive tech stack for temples  where we help them digitize," said Prashant Sachan to Moneycontrol. 

Via the Sri Mandir app, users can book poojas at temples, and access a library full of spiritual texts, scriptures and videos. It also allows users to consult astrologers and priests.

Founded by Prashant Sachan in 2020, AppsForBharat has already raised $14 million from several VC funds and angels including Tiger Global’s Scott Shleifer, Cred’s Kunal Shah, Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal, among others. In the last year, over 5 lakh devotees have completed 27 lakh pujas and offerings at temples across India through the Sri Mandir app, the firm said in a statement.

"Just to give you numbers, we think the entire devotion segment is almost a 50 billion market. And, Our sense is that 15 percent of this market should go digitized...our sense is that we'll easily go digital in the next 4-5 year or so . and AppsForBharat should take a larger market share of that," said Ashish Kumar, Cofounder & General Partner, Fundamentum who is joining the board of AppsForBharat.