made the conversation especially relevant to Arkam’s worldview. At Arkam, he has spent years studying large Indian markets where behaviour already exists, but formal products have not yet caught up. Apps for Bharat fit that pattern closely. It is built around something Indians already do every day, with a product and trust layer designed around how the user actually behaves.
Most investors told Prashant it was a difficult space. Faith was seen as a grey area. The user was assumed to be hard to monetise. Public markets had no clear precedent for the category. Prashant chose to build anyway.
The Question That Started Everything
Prashant’s path to faith tech was not obvious. After IIT Bombay and roles at Samsung and Microsoft, he co-founded Trell, a lifestyle content platform. Building a broad social product in India came with structural challenges. American and Chinese platforms were using India as a growth market, which made the category capital-intensive and difficult to defend.
In mid-2020, after leaving Trell, Prashant began mapping India’s offline behaviours. The question was simple: what do people already do every day that still has no credible online equivalent?
Education was crowded. Finance had strong founders building for it. Devotion stood out. It was frequent, personal, and practised by hundreds of millions of Indians, but the digital experience was mostly limited to ad-heavy websites and low-quality apps.
“How you think about the user shows up in the way you monetise them. If you’re monetising by ads, you don’t understand who this user is or what they need.”
That point stayed with Bala because it reflected the way good markets are often discovered. Prashant did not begin with devotion as a passion project. He arrived at it through elimination, much like an investor building a thesis. The sharper insight was that this user had not been respected by technology yet.
The rise of platforms like Sri Mandir also reflects a broader shift across Indian consumer internet startups, where founders are increasingly building products rooted in cultural behaviour and underserved local markets.
Four Apps, ₹500, and a WhatsApp Button
Before raising capital, Prashant built four simple apps. These included a devotional OTT app, a panchang app, and an early version of Sri Mandir. He spent ₹500 on performance marketing for each. The goal was to test behaviour, not launch polished products.
The most important feature was a WhatsApp button inside the hamburger menu, with a simple prompt asking users what could be improved. Messages began coming in. Many were long, detailed, and in Hindi. Users described what they liked, what they wanted, and how the app fit into their daily lives.
“The words are amazing. But when you see the faces of the people who have texted you, that’s where the magic starts happening. Anyone who has received 300 of these messages knows exactly who their user is.”
That feedback loop still shapes the way Apps for Bharat operates. Leaders share their own numbers. Users text directly. The company listens to real names, real faces, and real stories.
Bala returned to this point during the conversation because it revealed something important about Prashant’s operating style. Most consumer companies rely on surveys, dashboards, and NPS tools. Prashant built a direct line to the user, which gave the company a high-signal view of belief, need, and willingness to pay.
Understanding the Devotional User
One of the most useful parts of the conversation was Prashant’s segmentation of the devotional user. He does not define the user primarily by age or income. He looks at behaviour and intent.
There is the Devout Traditionalist, for whom temple visits, rituals, and form-factor worship are part of everyday life. There is the Purposeful Seeker, who performs a ritual with a specific intent, such as a Lakshmi puja for prosperity or an offering before an important decision. There is also the Spiritual but Not Devotional user, who may attend yoga retreats, chant, meditate, or engage with spirituality without calling themselves conventionally religious.
For Prashant, age is not the most useful qualifier. A 32-year-old and a 52-year-old can behave similarly in a devotional context. What matters more is frequency, intent, and the emotional hook.
“Age is not really the right qualifier. You have to look at usage frequency, and the hooks are very different for each segment.”
Bala connected this to a Krishna Das concert he had recently attended at Phoenix Mall, where thousands of young people were singing along and engaging with devotional music in a contemporary setting.
The point was not that every young Indian is becoming conventionally religious. It was that devotional and spiritual behaviour is showing up in newer formats, among younger cohorts, and outside traditional religious settings.
That makes the category more complex than an age-based market. It is shaped by identity, habit, emotion, and context. It also explains why digital spirituality in India is emerging as a meaningful consumer category rather than a niche trend.
From Content to Commerce
For the first two years, Sri Mandir was a free content app. Users could check in, listen to devotional music, and access religious literature. Then users began asking for something more practical.
Many had not visited important temples in years. Some said that when a relative travelled to a shrine, they would give them money to make an offering on their behalf. They wanted to know whether Sri Mandir could do the same.
That insight became Chadhava. Through the service, a local pandit physically visits the temple, makes an offering in the user’s name, records a video, and sends it back. A second service followed: remote pujas, where users can participate live or receive prasad from the shrine.
Today, 75 temples are live on the platform offering these services, with 2.5 lakh people paying every month.
“We are not taking temples to people. We are bringing people to temples, and whatever is authentic about that space, we preserve it.”
This is where monetisation became a sign of user understanding. Sri Mandir did not begin by asking what users could be sold. It listened to what users were already doing offline and built a digital layer around that behaviour.
For Bala, this was the clearest sign that the company had moved beyond content. The product was creating access for people who already had intent, but lacked proximity, time, or a trusted channel.
The Trust Problem
The biggest challenge was trust. Devotion is belief-led, but adoption is not automatic. Users need confidence. Temples need confidence. The platform has to earn both.
Early conversations with large temples did not move forward. Meetings were difficult to secure. Trustees were cautious. The category had to overcome a basic question that many Indian trust-led markets face: Will this company act responsibly with money, belief, and reputation?
Prashant changed the approach. Instead of starting with the most popular temples, he went to culturally important but less visible shrines. Many were hundreds of years old, with declining donations and limited ability to reach devotees beyond their immediate geography.
He showed them the app data. He brought detailed booklets explaining the team, the offices, the user base, and the product. The goal was to make the company visible, credible, and human.
“They need to trust that this person is not going to collect the money and vanish. Often, people don’t understand how important that is to get right.”
The pitch was value-first. Sri Mandir would help temples reach devotees, build engagement, and generate income from offerings people already wanted to make. Over time, the dynamic changed. Temples that were once hard to reach began approaching Prashant to be listed.
This part of the conversation connected personally with Bala. His uncle had been the trustee of a thousand-year-old temple near Chennai, an important cultural site that struggled during COVID while also feeding nearby villagers.
That experience made the problem more tangible. Many such temples are rich in history and meaning but lack discovery, distribution, and sustainable revenue. Sri Mandir gives them a way to reach devotees beyond their immediate geography while preserving the authenticity of the physical shrine.
As India’s temple economy evolves, platforms that combine trust, distribution, and access could become foundational digital infrastructure.
Building the Ecosystem
Sri Mandir today sits at the intersection of content, commerce, and access. The engagement spectrum runs from darshan, which is low involvement, to Chadhava and puja, which require deeper intent, and finally to physical pilgrimage.
Prashant’s five-year vision is to build an ecosystem around this behaviour. At one end, tens of thousands of temples could offer live darshans, building awareness and habit. In the middle, a thousand temples could enable Chadhava. At the deeper end, 500 temples could offer full puja services, with defined operating processes and on-ground vendor networks.
On AI, Prashant is careful.
“We cannot be creators of information. We have to be the bridge through which information passes, with proper grounding.”
An AI companion is in development, designed to answer devotional questions by referencing scripture rather than creating interpretations on its own. In this category, trust is the product. Every new layer has to protect it.
In competition, Prashant is direct. Around 20 companies are now trying to replicate parts of Sri Mandir. His advice to founders entering the category is to go user-backwards, not company-backwards.
“Anyone who has assumed Sri Mandir has made it is wrong. We are still figuring it out. The category needs innovators, not imitators.”
The scale of the opportunity became clearer when Prashant described his visit to Japan. In Kyoto, he saw an entire local economy built around a single saint’s shrine. India has hundreds of culturally important sites with similar depth, but far less organised discovery and distribution.
That is why Sri Mandir’s ambition is larger than a devotional app. If it becomes a trusted distribution layer for temples, rituals, and devotional access, it starts to look like infrastructure for India’s faith economy.
Starting Again
Before Apps for Bharat, Prashant had already experienced the demands of building for Indian consumers through Trell. That chapter gave him a sharper sense of what he wanted to build next: a category with clearer user intent, stronger cultural depth, and a more direct relationship with the user.
When he began exploring new ideas in 2020, he carried those lessons with him. Apps for Bharat emerged from that reset as a fresh attempt to build around a behaviour that was already deeply embedded in Indian life.
The company’s journey also reflects a broader trend increasingly recognised by venture capital investors in India and early-stage venture capital firms in India: some of the strongest startup opportunities are emerging from deeply local behaviour rather than globally copied internet models.
What He Would Build If Not This
When asked what he would build if he were not building Apps for Bharat, Prashant gave two answers.
The first was loneliness. He sees it as a structural problem. Young people are dealing with emotional difficulties earlier. Founders often appear confident while feeling deeply isolated. Elderly parents wait for calls from children who are busy, distracted, or far away.
“My parents wait for my call every single day, religiously. I could see they had been waiting for the last 35 to 40 minutes. Something needs to be done for that segment specifically.”
The second was elder care. Many people in Prashant’s generation carry a quiet sense of debt around not spending enough time with ageing parents. He believes there is a large, underserved problem at the intersection of companionship, community, and daily engagement for older Indians.
Both problems resemble devotion in one important way. They are frequent, emotional, and underserved. They require respect for the user, trust in the system, and a willingness to build from lived behaviour rather than category assumptions.
That is the thread running through Prashant’s journey. Apps for Bharat was built by taking the user seriously when most technology companies had not.
The larger lesson from the conversation is that strong categories are often hiding in plain sight. They sit inside behaviours that are repeated every day, deeply felt, and poorly served. The work is to stay close enough to the user to build with care.
The full episode with Prashant Sachan is available on our YouTube channel.
FAQs
What is Apps for Bharat?
Apps for Bharat is an Indian startup building digital products for the country’s faith and devotional ecosystem. The company is best known for Sri Mandir, a devotional platform that allows users to access darshan, devotional content, online pujas, and temple offerings digitally.
The company is focused on building trusted digital infrastructure around behaviours that are already deeply embedded in Indian daily life.
What is Sri Mandir?
Sri Mandir is a devotional app developed by Apps for Bharat that helps users engage with temples, rituals, and spiritual practices digitally.
The platform offers services such as online darshan, devotional content, Chadhava offerings, live pujas, and prasad delivery from temples across India. Today, Sri Mandir has millions of active users and works with dozens of temples nationwide.
Who founded Apps for Bharat?
Apps for Bharat was founded by Prashant Sachan, an IIT Bombay alumnus and former entrepreneur who previously co-founded the social commerce platform Trell.
After studying large underserved consumer behaviours in India, Prashant identified devotion and spirituality as categories with massive user engagement but limited high-quality digital experiences.
What makes the faith-tech category different from traditional consumer apps?
Faith-tech products operate in a category where trust, authenticity, and emotional connection matter as much as usability or convenience.
Unlike traditional consumer internet apps that often optimise for engagement or advertising, devotional platforms must build credibility with both users and institutions such as temples and religious communities.
User behaviour in this category is also deeply habitual and culturally rooted, making long-term trust more important than short-term growth tactics.
Why did Arkam Ventures invest in Apps for Bharat?
Arkam Ventures invested in Apps for Bharat because the company is building around a large existing behaviour rather than trying to manufacture demand.
The platform sits at the intersection of trust, digital access, and Indian consumer behaviour, which aligns closely with Arkam’s investment thesis around underserved but structurally important Indian markets.
The company also reflects a broader shift in Indian consumer internet startups toward products rooted in local culture, identity, and everyday behaviour.
Why is the faith economy becoming relevant for venture capital firms in India?
India’s faith economy represents a large, highly engaged, and historically underserved market with strong behavioural frequency.
As digital adoption expands across Bharat, venture capital investors in India are increasingly paying attention to categories built around existing cultural behaviour rather than imported internet models.
Platforms operating in digital spirituality, temple services, and devotional commerce are beginning to show that trust-led consumer categories can also become scalable technology businesses.
What makes Apps for Bharat different from other devotional platforms?
Apps for Bharat has focused on building trust-first products rather than simply creating devotional content or ad-driven engagement.
Its approach combines technology with real-world temple participation, including physical offerings, live pujas, and verified rituals conducted through partner temples.
The company also spends significant effort building credibility with both devotees and temple institutions, which has helped it create a more integrated ecosystem around India’s growing faith economy.
