AppsForBharat raises $10 million from Elevation Capital, others

Mumbai: AppsForBharat, a product studio for religious and devotional content material, has raised $10 million in a Sequence A funding spherical led by Elevation Capital together with participation of present traders Sequoia Capital India, Beenext in addition to Matrix Companions India.

Angel traders, together with Tiger World’s Scott Shleifer, DST World’s Saurabh Gupta and Meesho’s cofounders Vidit Aatrey and Cred’s founder Kunal Shah additionally pitched in.

The corporate will use the funds to create content material mental property, construct the product and rent expertise throughout the product, information, and engineering verticals.

Prashant Sachan, cofounder of influencer-led social commerce platform Trell, incubated AppsForBharat whereas on the firm and later spun it off as a separate entity. Sachan is now not a promoter at Trell. Nonetheless, Trell is a “vital shareholder” in AppsForBharat, Trell CEO Pulkit Agarwal advised ET.

AppsForBharat raised its seed funding spherical in April and garnered $14 million to date, together with the most recent fundraising.

The Bengaluru-based startup was based in November 2020 and has a workforce of 25 folks, which is predicted to extend to 60 over the following two-three quarters. It intends to monetise by means of a membership mannequin for sure companies. Sachan, nonetheless, mentioned the corporate shouldn’t be trying to earn income within the subsequent yr.

AppsForBharat’s first utility, SriMandir, which is on Android, has about 500,000 month-to-month energetic customers. Its each day energetic customers spend 20-25 minutes on the app on common, Sachan mentioned. About 40% of its customers are aged between 18 and 35. SriMandir is a digital vacation spot for devotees to create their shrines, eat devotional content material, join with prayer teams, and entry a big library of religious texts, scriptures, and movies.

“Any data that may enable you to practise devotion higher is there on this explicit app. We realise that there are extra social wants on prime of it the place folks would need to take heed to Satsang and Pravachan and be capable of interact of their communities,” Sachan mentioned. “All of that’s what we’re placing collectively. So, that is basically what we’re constructing with AppsForBharat broadly.”