New Delhi

Spiritual and astrology tech Start-ups are evincing strong investor interest in recent times amidst increasing adoption from Gen Z and millennial consumers. InstaAstro, Vama, Astrotalk and DevDham have raised fresh funds in the past few months.

On Thursday, InstaAstro announced that it has raised ₹18.50 crore in a pre-series A round led by Artha Ventures. The round also saw participation from LogX Ventures, Singularity Ventures, IR Capital Partners, Blume Founders Fund and Aloke Bajpai, MD and CEO, Ixigo.

125% growth

Nitin Verma, Founder and CEO, InstaAstro told businessline, “We aim to provide quality astrological consultations and spiritual experiences like Daily Puja and Darshan, to reach 1 billion seconds of daily consultation. Our focus on the quality of astrologers over quantity has driven 125 per cent growth in the past 8-9 months. Our international business now contributes over 15 per cent.”

As per Redseer, India’s faith and religious products and services market is pegged at $350 million, witnessing digital disruption. In fact, the market research firm pointed out that astrology is the frontrunner. Increasing adoption by Gen Z and millennials, urbanisation, democratising of astrology services and rising demand from Indian diaspora are factors that are fuelling growth of online astrology platforms.

Manu Jain, Co-Founder, Vama.app, which raised its seed+ funding round of $1.5 million in November, said, “ Investors are increasingly seeking fundamentally profitable businesses, which is fuelling their interest in the spiritual and astrology tech platforms. There are expectations that a large global brand in the faith tech space will emerge out of India, given our rich culture and legacy of spirituality.”

Vama’s last funding round was led by leading early-stage venture capital firm Wavemaker Partners. The round also saw the participation of existing as well as new marquee investors and micro-VC investors in November. “ We continue to see strong interest from existing and new investors. We could look at raising another round this year. We have seen 4x growth in FY24 compared to FY23,” Jain added.

“What’s truly fascinating is how the pandemic drove user adoption across multiple platforms. This can be attributed to the personalised and insightful nature of online spiritual astrology services. This unique stickiness has significantly increased customers’ lifetime value, attracting substantial funding in the sector. We expect this trend to accelerate, potentially becoming India’s next major export,” Anirudh A Damani, Managing Partner, Artha Venture Fund stated.