The Founder Who Asked a Different Question
In 2020, Prashant Sachan was not looking for another startup idea. He had already experienced the highs and pressure of building Trell and knew how exhausting the journey could become.
But after stepping away, one thought kept coming back to him: what if technology could solve a problem that was deeply Indian, deeply personal and still largely offline?
He began looking at something millions of Indians already did every day, pray, visit temples, perform rituals and stay connected with their faith. That simple observation became the beginning of AppsForBharat and eventually Sri Mandir.
From Trell to a Completely Different Journey
Before AppsForBharat, Prashant Sachan had co-founded Trell, a lifestyle and social-commerce platform. Building Trell taught him how quickly consumer behaviour can change when technology makes something easier and more accessible. But it also showed him the difficult side of scaling a startup, leaving him with questions about what he wanted to build next. His answer came from an area that most technology founders were not looking at closely enough, India’s spiritual and devotional ecosystem.
The Idea Came From His Own Roots
Prashant grew up around a family that valued hard work, but he also saw how spiritual practices gave people hope during uncertain times. That stayed with him as he watched smartphones become part of almost every aspect of Indian life. Shopping had moved online, entertainment had moved online, payments had moved online, but a huge part of everyday devotion was still dependent on physical access. He began wondering whether technology could bring convenience to faith without taking away the emotion behind it.
2020: AppsForBharat Begins
With that thought, AppsForBharat was started in Bengaluru in 2020 with a much bigger ambition than simply creating another devotional app. Prashant wanted to build technology around India’s spiritual needs and create products that could make devotion more accessible. The first major product was Sri Mandir, built around the idea of bringing devotees, temples and devotional services closer together. It was a risky bet because there was no obvious Indian playbook for building a large-scale faith-tech company.
Sri Mandir: Bringing the Temple Closer
Sri Mandir was designed as a digital destination where devotees could access devotional content and participate in temple-related services. Users could explore temples, book pujas, make offerings, receive prasad and engage with spiritual content through their phones. For someone living far away from their hometown, or even outside India, the app offered a way to stay connected with familiar rituals. The goal was never to replace the temple; it was to make access to the temple easier.
The Hardest Part: Technology Could Not Come First
Building a spiritual product was very different from building a shopping or entertainment app.
People might tolerate a poor interface while shopping, but when it comes to faith, trust and authenticity matter far more than features. Prashant and his team had to understand rituals, temple traditions, devotees and priests before deciding how technology should fit into the experience.
The challenge was to modernise access without making devotion feel commercial or artificial.
When Investors Had Questions
Faith was not an obvious startup category when AppsForBharat began.
The company had to convince investors that devotion could become a meaningful digital category and that people would actually pay for trusted spiritual services.
There were also difficult questions around retention, because a devotional platform needed to become part of a person’s routine rather than something they opened once and forgot.
Prashant’s answer was to keep building around real user behaviour instead of trying to force a conventional consumer-tech model onto spirituality.
The First Users Became the Real Proof
The turning point came when the team realised that people were not simply consuming devotional content, they were using the platform to maintain relationships with temples and rituals. For families living away from India, the value was even more personal: they could participate in pujas and make offerings even when distance made physical visits difficult. That behaviour showed the team that Sri Mandir was solving more than a convenience problem.
It was helping people preserve a connection with something they already considered important.
From an App to a Temple Network
As Sri Mandir grew, AppsForBharat started building relationships with temples rather than operating only as a consumer application. That created a two-sided ecosystem: devotees came looking for trusted services, while temples received a digital channel to reach people beyond their physical location. The company gradually expanded its temple partnerships and began building technology and operational infrastructure around them. The business was becoming less like a content app and more like a digital layer connecting India’s temple ecosystem with devotees worldwide.
4 Crore Downloads Changed the Conversation
By 2025, Sri Mandir had crossed 4 crore downloads, a milestone that showed the category had moved well beyond an experiment. In the preceding year alone, around 12 lakh devotees completed 52 lakh pujas and offerings across 70+ temples through the platform. These numbers gave the company something more valuable than downloads, evidence of repeated, meaningful transactions. The product that once looked unusual to mainstream technology investors was now operating at serious scale.
The Diaspora Found a Different Kind of Value
Sri Mandir’s audience was not limited to people living close to Indian temples.
The Indian diaspora in markets such as the US, UK, UAE, Canada, Australia and New Zealand became an important part of the platform’s growth. Nearly 20% of demand was coming from outside India, showing how technology could connect devotees with rituals thousands of kilometres away. For AppsForBharat, the global opportunity was not about exporting an app, it was about serving Indians who wanted to keep their traditions close.
Building a Business Around Devotion
AppsForBharat gradually developed a model around paid devotional services, temple offerings, pujas and related commerce. The company had to balance commercial sustainability with the sensitivity of the category, where trust matters as much as convenience.
Its platform connects devotees with temple services while also creating digital and economic opportunities for temples, priests and service providers. That combination gives the company a business model that goes beyond advertising or simple app subscriptions.
The Rs 175 Crore Series C Moment
In July 2025, AppsForBharat raised Rs 175 crore, or about $20 million, in Series C funding led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital. Existing investors, including Fundamentum, Elevation Capital and Peak XV Partners, also participated. The new capital was aimed at expanding temple partnerships, strengthening services and commerce, building fulfilment and logistics hubs and developing AI-led features. It was a strong signal that investors were beginning to see faith-tech as a serious category rather than a niche experiment.
The $175 Million Valuation
The 2025 Series C round valued AppsForBharat at approximately $175 million, according to reports. That works out to roughly Rs 1,450 crore, depending on the exchange rate used.
The valuation is particularly striking when placed beside the company’s beginnings: a founder exploring an overlooked behaviour had turned that insight into a venture-backed technology platform. It also gave AppsForBharat the financial base to attempt something much bigger than building another mobile application.
The Next Bet: 20+ Temple Towns
The company’s next phase is moving beyond the phone screen and deeper into the physical temple ecosystem. AppsForBharat planned to expand its presence across 20+ temple towns, including Ayodhya, Varanasi, Ujjain and Haridwar.
The strategy includes fulfilment and logistics infrastructure, stronger temple partnerships and local operations. This is important because the company increasingly wants to connect digital devotion with the real-world economy around temples.
Project Heritage: Technology Meets Preservation
AppsForBharat’s ambition is now extending into the preservation and revival of India’s temple ecosystem. Its Project Heritage initiative aims to support the revitalisation of 500+ temples over 24 months, with focus areas including digital infrastructure, livelihoods, community engagement and temple visibility. The idea is bigger than online pujas, it is about helping smaller and underserved temples become more visible and sustainable. In that sense, technology becomes a tool for preserving heritage rather than simply creating convenience.
AI Is Entering the Devotional Experience
The company is also exploring how artificial intelligence can make spiritual experiences more personalised. AppsForBharat has said its new investment will support AI-led features designed to improve engagement and personalise experiences for devotees. But the interesting challenge is knowing where technology should stop, because devotion is emotional, cultural and deeply personal. The winning product will not be the one with the most AI; it will be the one where technology quietly makes the experience more meaningful.
The Team Behind the Bet
Prashant did not build the company alone. He assembled a team that understood both consumer technology and the patience required to build a new category. The early team included people such as Pulkit Pujara, Alpesh Bupkya, Ameya Sahasrabudhe, Viraj Verma and Tanvi Lal, among others. Their job was not simply to launch features, it was to learn how technology could fit into a centuries-old ecosystem. That willingness to keep testing, listening and rebuilding became one of the company’s biggest strengths.
What Makes AppsForBharat Different
Most consumer startups begin with a problem that technology can solve faster, cheaper or better. AppsForBharat began with something different: a behaviour that already existed at enormous scale but had barely been organised digitally. People were already praying, visiting temples, making offerings and following rituals; the company simply asked how technology could make those experiences more accessible. That is why the opportunity is much larger than Sri Mandir alone.
From Sri Mandir to a Larger Faith-Tech Category
Sri Mandir was the first product, but Prashant’s ambition has always been broader than one app.
AppsForBharat is trying to build an ecosystem around spirituality, temple services, content, community and commerce. Its growing temple network gives it the supply side, while millions of devotees provide the demand side. If that ecosystem continues to scale, AppsForBharat could become one of the companies that defines India’s emerging faith-tech sector.
The Founder’s Biggest Lesson: Build for Real Behaviour
Prashant’s journey shows that the most interesting opportunities are not always the most obvious ones. He did not build another food-delivery app, social network or fintech platform; he looked at something deeply rooted in Indian life and asked why it had not received enough technological attention. The lesson is simple: you do not always need to invent a new behaviour, you can build a huge business by understanding an existing one better. That insight turned an overlooked category into a serious startup opportunity.
The Bigger Vision Behind AppsForBharat
Prashant wants to build products for Bharat, not simply copy models that have worked in other countries. His belief is that India has behaviours, needs and cultural patterns that deserve technology designed specifically for them. Sri Mandir is an example of that thinking: it takes a centuries-old practice and adds modern access without asking people to give up the tradition itself. The larger vision is to make AppsForBharat a technology platform for the spiritual lives of hundreds of millions of people.
From a Failed Chapter to a New Category
Prashant Sachan’s story began with the pressure of a previous startup, but his next chapter came from looking at the world around him differently. He saw that while almost every part of modern life was moving online, devotion remained deeply physical, fragmented and underserved.
From that observation came Sri Mandir, from Sri Mandir came a temple network, and from that network came a much bigger faith-tech ambition. Today, AppsForBharat stands at a $175 million valuation, with 4 crore+ downloads and a growing presence across India and the global Indian diaspora.
The Real Story Is Not About Technology
At first glance, AppsForBharat looks like a technology company. But underneath the technology is something much more human: the need to feel connected. Connected to a temple you grew up visiting. Connected to a ritual your parents taught you. Connected to a place that may now be thousands of kilometres away. Prashant Sachan understood that technology would work only if it respected that emotion first. And that may be the biggest reason Sri Mandir has grown from an unusual startup idea into one of India’s most interesting faith-tech stories.
