I am Aarihant Aaryan! Welcome to the Iron Sharpen Iron newsletter,
I share my weekly homework from my startup journey, learning about human behavior, and sometimes decoding industries and business models for fun.
I can’t control my curiosity :) )
Why religious tech?
Many people will now assume why to build a business in a religious space, it is a spiritual and devotional space making money isn’t cool but many don’t understand is startups or in fact, businesses are more about solving problems and because of the value that is created, consumers will be willing to pay
Many people who say don’t make this a business, are actually saying don’t create value - leave it as it is :(
Spirituality and devotion are filled with inefficiencies, that are making a devotee's life extremely hard, Tech has been well penetrated in all domains but under-penetrated in spiritual & devotional ways. the consumer still has to follow old steps to fulfill his needs.
What’s the opportunity?
You can have a closer look, using this link
Serving every religion gives you an opportunity to touch a billion lives at least, for example, T-Series Bhakti Sagar (A Hindu devotional content channel) has 58Million subscribers
Hillsong Worship (the biggest Christian band in the world) has cumulatively 20M subscribers and 4 Billion views
Popular Islam ( A youtube channel for Muslims) has more than 10.4M subscribers and 1.2B views
If the highest use cases like prayer or interaction with their community members are solved well, it opens up an opportunity to a different line of businesses same as fintech - if you can do payments business well, it helps you to cross-sell and up-sell a lot
I’ll give you an example, there are many religious organizations that sell their content (courses, books, classes), merchandise, and core services to the devotees so that with the revenue they generate they can serve more people efficiently
What has to be solved?
After all the research and building products in religious space, I believe these are things that have to be solved very well
Information ( Information between devotee & the place of devotion / Information between devotee & religion/ Information solved well in their regional language)
Engagement ( Help devotees and the place of worship build a strong relationship, help them amplify and strengthen their faith, and get connected with like-minded people in their faith, always remember revenue follows engagement → more engagement you solve for, the more revenue will flow)
Monetization ( Help religious organizations collect payments, and sell other lines of business)
If Information and engagement are solved very well, monetization will flow through.
For religious tech products I have seen, if you solve engagement and information well - revenue increases drastically.
How large can companies become in religious space:
Well, it depends on the religion you want to make an impact in but I’ll give you some level of understanding
Pushpay:
Pushpay is like a stripe for churches, and helps churches to collect donations - they are a stock-listed company in New Zealand. For every payment they process, they charge 2.5 to 4 % commission - Till date Pushpay is used by 14,000+ churches across the USA, New Zealand, Australia, and a few other countries - they have processed $7Billion worth of payments, and their revenue stands at $300+ Million with 60 odd million in profits
They barely have 1% of the market, there are 2M+ churches with 2.5B Christians that contribute to $7 trillion of donations, in the USA alone there are around 100M Christians that contribute to $1.2 trillion in donations
There are companies like Tithely, planning center, and Giving co that do the same
Glorify:
Glorify is A Christian prayer app, that helps Christians to become more efficient in their prayer and devotion life, It is more like an exclusive content app - that helps you listen to songs and devotion they raised $40M series A from A16Z and others.
There are other apps like Hallow, pray, and bible apps for kids( has 100M downloads) that are doing well
Muslim Pro Quran:
It has more than 100M downloads this app helps users to get notifications for prayer time based on their location, Audio version of the Quran, Helps users to track their progress and strive to complete the Quran and all types of Muslim content, their revenue is more than $20M ARR
Shri Mandir:
Shri Mandir by Apps for Bharat is a super app for Hindus it has various services and it has all poojas in audio format, most People across age and gender are use the audio feature every morning and people can actually access birth charts, do pooja’s “On their mobile phones” it allows you to offer virtual prayer to Gods in the much same way as you would do in your home temple
Astrotalk:
Astrotalk is a proper hope platform, it enables consumers to chat, call or do live video call with astrologers - they charge users per minute basis. For an audio/chat/live call the consumer is charged 10rs to 30rs per minute, Astrotalk as of date clocks 1 crore in revenue every day.
One solution doesn’t fit all:
With religious tech, many don’t understand one solution doesn’t fit all. For every religion and demography, a solution has to be crafted - the only way you will be able to do it is by observing how they worship and their daily behavior
For example, there are 2 types of worship
Community-based worship:
It is followed by Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, and others - It’s simple people come at a certain time, perform every activity together, and leave at the same time → since it is a community-based worship people build bonds with other devotees, as a byproduct of that many interpersonal transactions take place like marriage, business deals, employment opportunities, and dating, the best part about community-based worship is people are very less likely to churn, lifetime value is excellent
Traffic-based worship: It is followed by Hindus and other religions, they go to temples at their own times and worship independently → no personal engagement with other devotees, since there is no personal engagement and also it is The same God in different temples consumers are left with abundant choices on where to go worship
Hence for places like these, there is high churn and low LTV, also because of traffic-based worship there is no engagement between devotees and low inter-personal transactions that’s why matchmakers in Hindu religion make so much money
For audiences like these helping them to grow in their devotional life, content-based products will work very well.
Few Ideas to watch out for in religious tech:
Shopify for community-based religions
Gamified learning for kids to build their spiritual and devotional life
A product that can help consumers build their religious behavior
Regional content play for religions
If you have any thoughts or questions share them in the comments :)
If you found this insightful, do drop a like and tap on share.
A ❤️and share on LinkedIn / Twitter would definitely mean a lot.