While residing within the U.S., the Trivedi household was on the lookout for an answer to comply with a ritual follow of worshiping at considered one of India’s Jyotirlingas — a holy illustration of the Hindu god Shiva. After looking on YouTube for tactics to supply flowers and different gadgets ceremonially on the Indian temple one Sunday in 2023, the household discovered a video about an rising devotional app referred to as Sri Mandir.
The app presents custom-made movies of ceremonial prayers from greater than 50 Hindu temples in India and permits customers to take part in prayers, provide donations, and entry devotional content material nearly from their iPhone or Android smartphone. That’s precisely what the Trivedi household was on the lookout for.
It’s been a few 12 months, and the Trivedis are nonetheless utilizing Sri Mandir. One member of the family informed TechCrunch that the app helps customers do last-minute prayers and donate cash to the temple of their religion, even whereas residing removed from their residence nation and has entry to native temples and clergymen. But it comes with a reasonably excessive value: The common month-to-month spend on Sri Mandir outdoors India is $100.
“Sri Mandir just translates rupees into dollars and costs a whole lot of money, which makes it an ultra-premium app, not for everyone with a low budget,” the person stated.
The app faucets right into a rising want. As a part of their years-old rituals, Hindus worldwide usually go to temples of the gods and goddesses they comply with, provide donations, and take part in prayers looking for peace, well-being, or higher relationships. However, entry to devotional providers and spiritual info largely had been largely offline and unorganized in India.
Serial entrepreneur Prashant Sachan, who comes from a village close to Uttar Pradesh’s industrial metropolis Kanpur and beforehand co-founded social commerce startup Trell, based Sri Mandir’s father or mother firm, AppsForBharat, in November 2020. He was seeing even folks from rural India starting to come back on-line, however seen nation’s devotional practices remained steadfastly offline.
“When I started experimenting, devotion was one behavior that I started thinking about because we thought this deserved the kind of attention that it hasn’t gotten,” Sachan stated in an interview.
The three-year-old app boasts greater than 30 million downloads since 2020, and simply opened its entry to markets outdoors India in January. Since then, Sachan informed TechCrunch, the app has grown 25% to 30% month-on-month and garnered 500,000 registered customers and a couple of.5 million installs outdoors India. Most of its international viewers comes from the U.S., adopted by Canada, the U.Okay. and the Middle East.
Sachan stated the principle customers of Sri Mandir outdoors India are first and second-generation Indian-Americans who don’t usually go to temples in India however wish to connect with their roots.
This international footprint has helped Sri Mandir develop its revenues, which it generates from the small-ticket transactions customers make by means of the app by providing prayers and donations. Currently, 25% Sri Mandir’s complete income comes from outdoors India.
Alongside enabling customers to attach with the temples of their religion, Sri Mandir helps clergymen in these temples get extra devotees, ultimately permitting them to earn extra money. By dedicating 5 to 6 hours per week to the app, a priest sometimes makes about 25% to 30% greater than their common earnings from each day operations.
Manoj, a priest at Trimbakeshwar Shiva temple, positioned within the city of Trimbak in India’s western state of Maharashtra, informed TechCrunch that Sri Mandir helps devotees, even those that aren’t bodily match however eager to take part in occasional prayers.
The priest will get 40 to 50 devotees by means of the Sri Mandir app weekly. He famous that the app additionally helps clergymen get extra funds from devotees — the app prices particular person customers even for group prayers, whereas teams visiting the temple in individual could not all pay individually. Manoj acknowledged, nevertheless, that it lacks…
