When covid-19 lockdowns swept across India in 2020, they brought religious life to a halt. Temples were shuttered, large gatherings banned, and in-person rituals suspended — many for the first time in living memory. Millions of devotees were suddenly cut off from their usual spiritual routines, from daily temple visits and bhajans (community singing sessions) to life-cycle ceremonies like weddings and last rites. In the north Indian city of Kanpur, Mohit Tiwari, a 35-year-old priest, began receiving calls from anxious devotees seeking ways to continue their spiritual practices at home. Without access to priests or temple services, many turned to phone calls and video links for guidance. That’s when the idea for his startup struck.

“I realized we could do everything virtually whether it is spiritual mantras, offerings, or rituals, based on an individual’s name and gotra [ancestral lineage]. There was no need for physical presence,” said Tiwari, who then founded OnlinePujaBooking.com, a “spiritual tech” company offering a variety of traditional Hindu rituals that can be booked online and performed virtually via live video. 

“Soon people started joining me in the livestream to participate in poojas [worship],” he said.

What began as a crisis work-around has since evolved into a full-fledged industry. Across India, a wave of spiritual tech platforms transform priests into livestream hosts, temple rituals into gamified 3D experiences, and mantras into AI-generated audio. 

Over the last few years more than 950 faith tech startups have emerged in the country, almost exclusively focusing on Hinduism. 

These platforms are reimagining centuries-old religious rituals for the smartphone era — and for urban millennials and Gen Z users who want their spirituality as personalized and frictionless as a shopping app.

“I or my parents hardly find time to visit a temple or manage all the arrangements for a puja, so performing it online is a more convenient option for us,” 24-year-old Mohit Sharma, a psychology student based in New Delhi, told The Verge.

Critics have raised concerns that the digital convenience may be encouraging superficial engagement rather than spiritual depth. They argue that by turning complex traditions into transactional services, apps risk promoting superstition or hollowing out centuries-old practices.

“Today’s youth want instant answers,” said Anil K. Rajvanshi, an academic and author who studies spirituality and technology. “But in spirituality, depth comes slowly. Technology gives you a chunk of knowledge, but extracting wisdom from it requires questioning and balance — and that’s missing.”

For Tiwari, the convenience of performing rituals online doesn’t dilute their meaning; instead, it offers a practical way to stay connected with faith amid daily demands. “Whether it is done online or in person, the puja is the same,” Tiwari said. “It is all based on the name and gotra. What matters is the intention — the sankalp.”

This model of virtual ritual has found a growing audience well beyond India’s borders. Tiwari’s team fields inquiries from both India and abroad, with nearly half of his monthly clients logging in from countries like the US, UK, and Australia.

Tiwari’s platform offers a range of packages to suit different needs and budgets of clients from “economy” options to “premium” services. For example, a popular marriage mantra that is “highly effective” for those facing delays or obstacles in finding a suitable life partner is available in three different tiers. The economy package, priced at ₹7,100 ($84), includes one priest and a three-day ritual — roughly equivalent to a week’s wages for a skilled urban worker in India. The premium package, priced at ₹51,000 ($605), provides a complete seven-day experience with five priests and an extensive 125,000 recitations of the mantra. That’s nearly the cost of two month’s rent for a two-bedroom apartment in many Indian metropolitan cities.

Yet the business is booming. 

More Indians, especially urban millennials, seek spiritual services online with platforms like Tiwari’s no longer being niche experiments. They are tapping into a vast, under-regulated faith economy where millions of rupees are already changing hands and the potential for profit is only growing.

“We get all kinds of requests regarding emotional healing, planetary imbalances, spiritual growth, and career setbacks,” Tiwari said. “Everyone has a reason, and they don’t need to step into a temple anymore.”

Sacred screens and startup scripts

India’s religious tech sector has experienced a meteoric rise in the last half a decade especially after the covid-19 pandemic. It is now drawing increased attention from investors, fueled by growing demand for digital religious services. Startups in the space raised more than $50 million in venture funding in 2024, up sharply from $4.3 million the previous year.

This rapid growth is rooted in a cultural landscape where ritualistic faith is deeply woven into daily life. Religious practices are integral to both personal and community routines. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, nearly 97 percent of Indian adults say religion is very important in their lives — one of the highest rates globally. This enduring devotion has created fertile ground for startups offering ways to integrate spirituality into digitally connected lifestyles.

Reflecting this momentum, the spiritual wellness app market in India is projected to reach $168.8 million by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.4 percent from 2024 to 2030. This expansion is mirrored by India’s broader religious and spiritual market, valued at approximately $58.56 billion in 2023.

“People are becoming more curious towards religion and spirituality but they have little time to do it physically so we are offering these services online,” said Vikram Shastri, COO of the Vedic Sadhana Foundation, which operates a series of spiritual digital platforms and websites.

The foundation runs a suite of apps, including the Sadhana app, which offers users a 3D environment to perform complex rituals like fire offerings or chanting, often with AI-assisted guidance. Their audience? Primarily 18- to 45-year-olds.

On screen, users navigate a temple-like virtual space where they can select offerings, light ritual fires, and chant mantras, all guided by step-by-step audio and visual cues. The app’s built-in AI explains the meaning behind each action, helping users understand not just how to perform the ritual, but why it is done.

“We are not trying to replace tradition,” Shastri said. “We are trying to meet people where they are — on their phones.”

The Sadhana app has seen exceptional growth, with over 2.7 million rituals performed last year alone. 

Buoyed by success, the platform also recently launched “Tantra Sadhana,” a gamified 3D experience that allows users to perform esoteric rituals that once required secluded forests or sacred spaces.

“Like, for example, there are practices where one would do rituals on top of a corpse or one would do in the middle of a jungle. One would actually offer, you know, parts of the body to the divine as visualization to indicate that surrender to the divine. So, these are very esoteric practices where one may not even know the steps of how to go about it,” Shastri said. “So, we have brought that forth in a 3D gamelike setting where the character or the protagonist actually goes around in the forest, picks up the ingredients, and performs the ritual.”

Other offerings include Astro Sadhana for personalized astrological remedies and Vedavyasa AI, a spiritual chatbot designed to answer complex religious questions about mantras, scriptures, or symbolic meanings behind rituals. For devotees seeking a more sacred interface, there’s even a custom-built “Vedic Android Tablet” — marketed as a digital altar. The altar comes preloaded with curated scriptures, bhajans, and ritual tools, offering a dedicated sacred space for daily practice. Users can listen to devotional music, read religious texts, or follow along with guided rituals without distractions from other apps.

The goal, Shastri said, is to move beyond passive consumption and help users actively engage in spiritual practice even from a screen. 

‘Commodification’ of sacred traditions

The interface of most of these “spiritual apps” blends soft ambient temple music with immersive visuals. Glowing oil lamps flicker as Sanskrit chants play in the background, while digital garlands sway gently from virtual shrines. The color palette evokes sacred spaces: deep reds, saffron golds, and earthen browns dominate the screen. As users move through rituals, the screen slowly pans across ornately designed idols and sanctum spaces, mimicking the slow, reverential pace of a real-life puja.

Yet for all their innovation, some experts in the country argue these apps commodify sacred traditions, transforming faith into yet another subscription-based service.

“These are all shamanic responses to fear,” said Rajvanshi. “When people feel insecure, they seek a pillar of support — sometimes it is worship, sometimes it is astrology. But many of these apps exploit that fear.”

Rajvanshi warns that while technology can democratize access to information, it also risks flattening deeply philosophical traditions into transactional services. “Spirituality gives us wisdom,” he said. “But wisdom cannot be downloaded like an app. It comes from introspection, questioning, going deeper, and not by quick fixes.”

Several apps walk a tightrope between devotion and digital consumerism. With AI-generated horoscopes, push notifications reminding users to pray, and leaderboards for devotional acts, the user journey increasingly mirrors that of fitness or finance apps.

Still, for millions of users, these platforms offer a sense of connection, comfort, and control particularly among diaspora populations who may be far from temples and community. “This is probably the only way to be rooted with our traditions in this fast-paced world,” Sharma said.

Ultimately, the digitization of faith is not just a technological shift, it is a cultural one. In a country where religion has long been communal, embodied, and centered around temple visits, festivals, and inherited rituals, the migration of rituals to screens may fundamentally reshape how belief is practiced, transmitted, and even understood. 

In many traditions, even the physical act of reaching a temple, whether it meant climbing several hundred steps or traveling across states, was considered a form of penance and devotion. Today, instead of engaging deeply with scripture or spiritual questioning, many younger users seek instant solutions — for relationships, careers, or emotional clarity — without the time or effort once associated with religious study.

“Spirituality is going through a UX redesign,” said Tiwari. “You don’t need to climb 300 steps to a temple anymore. You just need a phone.”

In a dimly lit, cluttered workshop in Delhi’s Nehru Place, the air hums with the sound of whirring drills and the crackle of soldering irons. Sushil Prasad, a 35-year-old technician, wipes the sweat off his brow as he carefully pieces together the guts of an old laptop. It is a daily ritual — resurrecting machines by stitching together motherboards, screens, and batteries scavenged from other trashed older laptops and e-waste — to create functional, low-cost devices.

“Right now, there is a huge demand for such ‘hybrid’ laptops,” Prasad says, his hands swapping out a damaged motherboard. “Most people don’t care about having the latest model; they just want something that works and won’t break the bank.”

Across India, in metro markets from Delhi’s Nehru Place to Mumbai’s Lamington Road, technicians like Prasad are repurposing broken and outdated laptops that many see as junk. These “Frankenstein” machines — hybrids of salvaged parts from multiple brands — are sold to students, gig workers, and small businesses, offering a lifeline to those priced out of India’s growing digital economy.

“We take usable components from different older or discarded systems to create a new functioning unit. For instance, we salvage parts from old laptop motherboards, such as capacitors, mouse pads, transistors, diodes, and certain ICs and use them in the newly refurbished ones,” says Prasad.

As he explains, Manohar Singh, the owner of the workshop-slash-store where Prasad works, flips open a refurbished laptop while sitting on a rickety stool. The screen flickers to life, displaying a crisp image. He smiles — a sign that another machine has been successfully revived.

“We literally make them out of scrap! We also take in second-hand laptops and e-waste from countries like Dubai and China, fix them up, and sell them at half the price of a new one,” he explains.

“A college student or a freelancer can get a good machine for INR 10,000 [about $110 USD] instead of spending INR 70,000 [about $800 USD] on a brand-new one. For many, that difference means being able to work or study at all.”

Singh recalls a young engineering student who visited his shop last year, desperate for a laptop to complete his coursework. “He had saved up for months but was still short of money. I put together a machine for him from spare parts, and he left with tears in his eyes. That is when you know this work matters.”

But this booming market does not exist in isolation. It is entangled with a much larger battle, one between small repair technicians and global technology giants. While these Frankenstein laptops are a lifeline for many, the repair industry itself faces significant roadblocks. Many global manufacturers deliberately make repairs difficult by restricting access to spare parts, using proprietary screws, and implementing software locks that force customers to buy new devices instead of fixing old ones.

Satish Sinha, associate director at Toxics Link, a nonprofit working on waste management, believes repair technicians like Prasad and Singh are on the front lines of a larger battle.

“India has always had a repair culture, from fixing old radios to hand-me-down phones. But companies are pushing planned obsolescence, making repairs harder and forcing people to buy new devices instead,” Sinha says. 

“We need to encourage such reuse of materials. These repaired or new hybrid devices minimize waste by extending a product’s lifespan and reducing overall market waste. Reusing components cuts down on the need for new materials, lowering energy use, resource extraction, and environmental impact,” Sinha adds.

The Indian government has started discussions on right-to-repair laws, inspired by similar efforts in the European Union and the United States. However, progress remains slow, and repair shops continue to operate in legal limbo, often forced to source different parts from informal and e-waste markets.

As a result, many repair technicians have no choice but to rely on informal supply chains, with markets like Delhi’s Seelampur — India’s largest e-waste hub — becoming a critical way to source spare parts. Seelampur processes approximately 30,000 tonnes (33,069 tons) of e-waste daily, providing employment to nearly 50,000 informal workers who extract valuable materials from it. The market is a chaotic maze of discarded electronics, where workers sift through mountains of broken circuit boards, tangled wires, and cracked screens, searching for usable parts. 

Farooq Ahmed, an 18-year-old scrap dealer, has spent the last four years sourcing laptop components for technicians like Prasad. “We find working RAM sticks, motherboards with minor faults, batteries that still hold charge and sell it to different electronic workshops,” he says. “These parts would end up in a landfill otherwise.”

But while e-waste salvaging provides cheap repair materials, it comes at a steep price. Without proper safety measures, workers handle toxic materials such as lead, mercury, and cadmium daily. “I cough a lot,” Ahmed admits with a sheepish grin. “But what can I do? This work feeds my family.”

Despite the dangers, the demand for Frankenstein systems continues to grow. And as India’s digital economy expands, the need for such affordable technology will only increase. Many believe that integrating the repair sector into the formal economy could bring about a win-win situation, reducing e-waste, creating jobs, and making technology more accessible.

“If the government recognizes independent repair businesses, gives them access to spare parts, and sets quality standards, we can transform this industry,” Sinha says.

But for now, in dimly lit workshops across the country, men like Prasad and Singh continue their work, reviving the dead, bridging the digital divide, and proving that, in India, the repair ecosystem is set to thrive.