AppsForBharat, a spiritual-tech company, has raised $10Mn as India continues to adopt technology in every section of society. The Series A funding round was led by Elevation Capital along with participation of existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Beenext as well as Matrix Partners India.
Angel investors like Scott Schleifer (Tiger Global Partner), Saurabh Gupta (DST Global Managing Partner), Ankush Sachdeva, ShareChat co-founders Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh, Utsav Somani (iSeed Partner), Anshumani Ruddra (Google Group Product Manager), Meesho co-founders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, and Cred founder Kunal Shah also participated, it added.
Earlier, the company had raised $4Mn in seed funding from Sequoia Capital India, BEENEXT, and WEH Ventures.
Now, the question is-what is a spiritual tech company? AppsForBharat is a product studio that focuses on devotional content. It aims to leverage technology to provide a product suite for India’s vast population, most of which is religious. It aims to build a spiritual-tech company, which specifically addresses the underserved digital and spiritual needs of the Indian population.
The company was founded by co founder of Indian social media platform Trell-Prashant Sachan. Now, it has become a separate entity from Trell, looking to tap into a niche of its own.
Moreover, it also plans to include products dedicated to well being, meditation related tools, etc.
AppsForBharat’s first app-SriMandir, already has about 500,000 monthly users and is somewhat of a social media platform curated around devotion. It allows users to create their own shrines, meet other users and engage in prayer sessions, and much more. Moreover, it also has a huge library of literary texts, scriptures and videos, for users to engage with.
The company wants to keep building on this brand, and launch more products in this sector.
“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,” Sachan said.
The company will use the funds raised for creating content IPs, building the product, and hiring talent across the product, data and engineering verticals
