Exclusive: AppsForBharat to raise $30 Mn in Series B round

AppsForBharat, a product studio focused on building apps for the spiritual and devotional needs of Indian users, is in advanced stages to raise a new round from new and existing investors, three people aware of the development told Entrackr.

This will be the third investment round for the Bengaluru-based startup in a matter of 10 months. Previously, it had scooped up $10 million Series A in September and $4 million Seed round in August last year.

“A US-based investor is in talks with AppsForBharat to lead a $30 million Series B round,” said one of the sources on the condition of anonymity. “Existing investors include Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital, BEENEXT and Matrix Partners will also double down their stakes in the company,” the person added.

AppsForBharat is currently developing a range of mobile apps that offer superior user experience and cater to the country’s many underserved and often overlooked spiritual as well as devotional needs.

AppsForBharat was founded in November 2020 by Prashant Sachan who was the co-founder of the lifestyle centric short video app Trell until March 2021.

“The terms of the deal are being finalised and AppsForBharat is likely to be valued in the range of $130-150 million [post money] in the Series B round,” said another source who also requested anonymity.

AppsForBharat’s maiden product SriMandir has attracted significant growth in terms of downloads. According to Sensor Tower’s data, it has recorded 3.6 million downloads since its inception. This was around 1.3 million during September last year.

SriMandir allows users to create their personalised shrines, consume devotional content, connect with prayer groups, and access a large library of spiritual texts, scriptures and videos. Users can also participate in personalised discourses and consult with astrologers and priests.

AppsForBharat declined to comment on the story. Queries sent to Sequoia, Elevation Capital, BEENEXT and Matrix Partners did not elicit an immediate response. We’ll update the post in case they do.

In the online devotional and religious domain, AppsForBharat has been building something similar to US-based Hallow and UK-based Glorify. Hallow is a Catholic prayer and meditation app and Glorify offers users guided meditation, along with audio bible passages and Christian music. Hallow raised $40 million in Series B funding in November last year whereas Glorify raised $40 million in Series A  led by Andreessen Horowitz in December.

Apart from institutional investors, AppsForBharat has a long list of angel investors including Scott Schleifer (partner, Tiger Global), Saurabh Gupta (managing partner, DST Global), Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh (co-founders, ShareChat), Utsav Somani (partner, iSeed), Anshumani Ruddra (group PM, Google), Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal (co-founders, Meesho), Kunal Shah (founder, CRED) and Sai Srinivas (MPL).