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Bengaluru-based AppsForBharat, a product studio focused on building apps for spiritual and devotional needs of Indian users, has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Elevation Capital with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital India, BEENEXT and Matrix Partners India.

The round also featured leading angels like 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); and Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED).

According to the official statement, the company will use the funding for creating content IPs, building the product, and hiring talent across the product, data, and engineering verticals.

Previously, in April 2021, the startup had secured $4 million in seed funding (announced recently) from Sequoia Capital India, BEENEXT, and WEH Ventures.

Founded in November 2020 by Prashant Sachan, AppsForBharat was set up with a vision to build a spiritual-tech company that specifically caters to the needs of Indians. The startup 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. Its wide range of products will include high quality spiritual, devotional, wellbeing, and meditation-related tools, communities, and services. 

AppsforBharat aims to become a digital spiritual sanctuary for those looking to enhance their spiritual and devotional journey through the ease of their smartphones. Their apps are attempting to move offline behaviour to online and thereby create a digital habit.

Commenting on the funding, Prashant Sachan, Founder, AppsForBharat, said, “We are grateful to have such great partners on our journey. 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.”

“Our aim is to build products that users love, one that becomes a daily habit for a billion Indians, products that offer happiness and peace. If someone (reading this) is passionate about building products for such needs, we invite them to join our team.”  

Its first product – SriMandir aims to be the virtual destination for devotees to create their personalised shrines, consume devotional content, connect with prayer groups, and access a large library of spiritual texts, scriptures and videos. 

Mayank Khanduja, Partner, Elevation Capital, said, “As early investors in multiple content and social platforms, we have been close witnesses to the need gap for devotional platforms. When we met Prashant and heard his vision behind AppsForBharat, we instantly knew this is a business we want to be partners in. As we spoke to the users, we realised that the product is satisfying the needs of a very wide distribution of audience across age groups, geographic locations, and income brackets. We are really excited about the immense opportunity ahead for the company in building a product that works for a billion plus people.“