India’s Spiritual Tech sector is moving from scattered online services into a larger commercial ecosystem spanning temple rituals, astrology, devotional products, digital payments and AI tools. The shift is backed by rising investment and search activity, but some of the biggest numbers used to describe the market remain estimates rather than settled facts.
Investment is already following the users: Tracxn data cited in industry reporting shows funding for Indian faith-tech startups rising from $4.3 million in 2023 to $50.7 million in 2024. The increase provides a clearer measure of investor activity than broad claims about the size of the faith economy. In July 2025, AppsForBharat, the company behind Sri Mandir, raised $20 million in a Series C round. VAMA, a platform founded by Aacharya Dev, Himanshu Semwal and Manu Jain, raised ₹22 crore in September 2025.
VAMA’s own growth illustrates how the business is being built around established religious institutions. Its investor Wavemaker said in 2023 that the company worked with more than 250 temples and 300 astrologers. By September 2026, its app was claiming more than 550 temples and 20 lakh devotees. Those figures are company-provided and are not equivalent to audited active-user or revenue measures.
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The commercial model extends beyond temple bookings. Platforms offer online pujas, live rituals, astrology consultations and devotional commerce, while digital payments allow transactions to occur without requiring physical attendance. India’s UPI network processed more than 24.5 billion transactions in August 2026, according to NPCI. That establishes the scale of digital payments, although it does not by itself prove that UPI caused faith-tech adoption.
Search behavior is becoming another signal
Kantar’s India in Search 2026 findings show how religious and spiritual queries are intersecting with technology. During the calendar year 2025, searches for “Mahabharat AI” rose 400%, while “Gita GPT” increased 83%. Searches for “female pandit for wedding” doubled, and Navratri gifting searches rose 267%.
These figures measure changes in Google search behavior, not the number of people buying services or using AI religious products. Kantar managing director Soumya Mohanty said search behavior is “one of the most honest signals of how India thinks, feels, aspires and adapts,” and described spirituality as a major search area. The data therefore documents growing search interest, while the claim that it proves consumer demand is an interpretation.
The impact is not confined to India. The global spiritual wellness apps market was estimated at $2.16 billion in 2024 and projected at $7.31 billion by 2033 in a Grand View Research estimate. That category includes meditation, mindfulness, yoga and related wellness services, so it should not be treated as identical to religious faith-tech. TransactBridge separately cites an India spiritual wellness apps figure of $261.2 million by 2033, but that number could not be independently verified from the evidence reviewed.
COVID accelerated a market that already existed
The pandemic sharply increased digital religious activity. During the 2020 lockdowns, temples and priests moved services to livestreams, WhatsApp, Skype and Zoom, while some institutions arranged home pujas and prasad delivery.
But COVID did not create online worship from nothing. Academic research documents commercial online puja services in India’s diaspora communities as early as 1999. The lockdowns instead accelerated an existing digital model and brought it into wider institutional use.
That history matters when assessing claims that the pandemic created the foundation for Spiritual Tech. It is more accurate to describe COVID as an accelerator.
The market itself is harder to measure
Estimates for India’s religious and spiritual economy vary substantially. Some industry reports put the 2023 market at about $58.56 billion, while IMARC estimated it at $65 billion in 2024. Published estimates include rounded figures near $50 billion, while another estimate used $58 billion.
These figures cannot be treated as interchangeable. IMARC’s definition includes organized and unorganized activity, tourism, donations, religious merchandise, media and infrastructure, among other categories. A large overall faith economy therefore does not establish the size of the narrower Spiritual Tech sector.
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The same problem affects startup counts. Industry reporting has cited more than 900, about 950, and 951 Indian faith-tech or related startups, with the figures attributed to Tracxn. Without the underlying dataset and category definition, the numbers should be treated as reported estimates rather than a definitive census.
There is also a measurement gap around religious participation. Claims that more than 80% of Indians engage in daily spiritual or religious activity have circulated in industry and financial commentary. Pew Research Center’s 2021 survey, using different questions, found that 60% of Indian adults prayed daily. The figures are not directly comparable because “spiritual activity” is broader than daily prayer, but the difference shows why methodology matters.
What Spiritual Tech changes is increasingly concrete: access to rituals can move online, temple services can be packaged as digital transactions, astrology can be delivered on demand, and AI can become part of religious discovery and interpretation. For consumers, convenience is increasing, while questions of trust, authorization and transparency remain central to transactions. Yet the sector’s growth claims still rest partly on commercial estimates, company metrics and search behavior.
The upside is visible, but the sector’s boundaries remain unsettled. The next phase is therefore easier to document than to quantify. New funding, expanding temple partnerships and digital religious services show an active market. But whether that activity represents a single global Spiritual Tech industry, how large it really is, and how much of religious commerce has actually moved online remain open measurement questions.
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