Summary

The Offline Network Episode 6: Carbon & Spiritual Tech (aired 2025-09-12). Guests: Shrey Agarwal, Prashant Sachan from Alt Carbon, AppsForBharat. Shrey: "So I think overall, even today, around 97 percent of the entire market is just carbon avoidance credits." Shrey: "However, the main problem with planting trees is that the carbon that gets removed is not very durable." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, consumer brands and D2C, health tech. The Offline Network is India's live show on startups, tech, and venture — streaming M/W/F at 4 PM IST on YouTube.

Full Transcript

Utsav Somani: Hello folks, welcome to the Friday stream of TON's week two. Today we've got exciting category creating founders who are both operating in different industries but are superb leaders. They've created exciting companies in the world of spirituality and faith tech and the other one in climate tech and carbon credits. We're going to hear from them shortly, but being Friday, I think the Indian startup world is taking a little bit of a breather after a hectic week. So we've got a very short news cycle for you today and a slow one. So I'll let Dhruv geek out on a topic that he raised just before this call. So I think let's expand our minds with the news that he wants to share with us. Dhruv, what's happening on Mars?

Dhruv Sharma: So, sir, NASA has two rovers on Mars. You'll remember these names. One is Perseverance and the other one is Curiosity. And the other day NASA posted, I'm sorry, interesting names. Yes, very interesting names. And and they went one after the other. It takes about seven months to make the journey, by the way. And so sometime last year, Perseverance had was drilling down this river delta on Mars and it found some stones and no ordinary stones because these stones had remnants that, you know, traces of carbon. If similar stones were found on Earth, we would we could say very conclusively that signs of microbial life from, you know, from a different time, from an earlier time. But this is Mars. And so we can't say that conclusively without testing first. The challenge is Perseverance can't send these samples back home. There's simply no way. So it's had to make do, the rovers had to make do with whatever testing facilities it has on board. And and we're, of course, like we're kind of assuming we're speaking with a non-scientific audience predominantly, but it's it's almost like Mars is whispering to us, hey, guys, they used to once be once be life around here. You know, I was not always this red and this dry and this barren.

Utsav Somani: And what does it mean for us? Like, I mean, what does it mean for Elon Musk's mission to Mars?

Dhruv Sharma: His mission to Mars, so he talks often about making life multi-planetary and you can only make life multi-planetary if if, you know, your your new home is, in a sense, inhabitable. And and I think the one thing we're riding on is if Mars was once inhabitable, there's got to be traces of something that we can use to make it habitable once again. But enough about Mars. Look, the thing is, we don't know when we'll get to Mars. And we don't want to say what? Yes, we don't know when we'll have a second home. Until then, Earth is the only home we have. And we have people like Shrey who are working hard with their teams to to make it better for us. You know, folks, when you fly from one place to the other, or even when you drive cross-country, you look all around and there's fields and you get the sense that maybe there's a lot of soil on Earth. But and maybe Shrey will have the actual number. But the troops, this is this hasn't happened before.

Utsav Somani: This is what happens on a live show, guys.

Dhruv Sharma: This is what happens in a live show. This is so I'll fix this. But over to you, Utsav, why don't you?

Utsav Somani: All right, so next, ManGenius is doing something very exciting in the world of carbon credits. I think he's working towards helping India become the carbon credit factory of India. And I've known Shrey for a while. And whenever he sends these awesome newsletters, most of it goes over my head. So today we're going to try and decode all of that just so that I can learn. And hopefully our audience can also pick up a few things about the carbon credit market of India. And what are we doing to actually tackle climate change? We've seen software factories being built in India. But can we really make an impact at the global level? And that's what our next guest, Shrey, will do for us. Shrey, welcome. Shrey, welcome. Hey, hi, guys. Nice to be here. Hi, Utsav, how are you? Awesome. Thank you. So, I mean, first things first, like what is what are carbon credits like? I mean, quickly break it down for us and then paint a picture of what the carbon credit market of India looks like.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): Sure, absolutely. So one carbon credit equals to around 1000 kgs of carbon dioxide. It's as simple as that. Now, what happens is that companies all over the world, they produce carbon emissions, they have carbon emissions, they produce carbon dioxide, and they have to offset it to save the world. And there are compliances around it. And there's a voluntary carbon markets as well. And I can speak about both in detail. Now, you know, whenever companies are looking to offset their carbon emissions, somebody has to remove or avoid these carbon emissions. So there are two kinds of carbon credits. One is avoidance. When you're avoiding any future emissions, you have to avoid that's a thousand kgs or one ton of emissions to claim one avoidance carbon credit or you're removing carbon, which is historically, you know, either you can do it. The most intuitive understanding of removing carbon is planting trees. So let's say if you plant trees and if you can remove 1000 kgs or one ton of carbon dioxide, you can claim a carbon removal credit. Once you create these credits or generate these credits, you get them audited and verified and then you deliver it to the corporates and clients who are looking to offset their carbon footprints at a cost. So that's the basic principle of carbon credits.

Utsav Somani: And market size in India, trading volumes, how many carbon credits exchange hands?

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): Sure. So I think overall, even today, around 97 percent of the entire market is just carbon avoidance credits. So and even the trading happens largely in the voluntary markets for carbon removal credits. So numbers there are a bit different compared to ground reality. Overall, the public number around how much carbon removal credits have been sold is around nine to ten billion dollars worth only in the last couple of two to three years itself, or maybe two to five years. And the main problem with the carbon removal sector is that there is a huge shortage of supply. So there's a huge supply demand gap when it comes to carbon removal credits, primarily because of how operationally rigorous one has to be when they're focusing on the carbon removal sector and how scientifically adept one has to be in terms of proving that carbon removal is actually happening. And even within carbon removal, you have the engineered carbon removal sector, which is what we do as adult carbon. And then you have the nature based carbon sector. But overall, it's a trillion dollar industry. And and hopefully, you know, there will be a lot more suppliers of carbon removal credits, which is when you'll be able to actually do a market survey. So there is a lot of clients who are now shifting from avoidance credits to removal credits because of how the requirement of the world to purchase removal credits and for us to actually remove billions of tons of carbon by 2030, 2035, 2040 can keep pushing the targets. But we need to remove around six to 10 billion tons of carbon every year. And even if you close the tap or reduce the taps ability to to produce water or to to flow for the water to flow, you will still have to create an outlet of all the historic emissions that you have. And which is why most clients like Stripe, Shopify, Google, et cetera, they've started purchasing high quality removal credits.

Dhruv Sharma: In the abstract, it's tough to understand what's carbon removal or what's CDR. Maybe tell us and our listeners using one of the techniques that you've that you adopt what it means, how it works. Sure.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): So generally, carbon removal, planting trees removes carbon whenever there's something that is like from our third grade textbooks. However, the main problem with planting trees is that the carbon that gets removed is not very durable. There's a possibility of reversals happening, which means that the carbon can go back into the atmosphere. And that's that's termed as durability in the carbon removal world. Now, what you're looking for as a client is higher durability and higher permanence and permanence simply for how long can you store your carbon for? And that's exactly what we at Alt Carbon focus on. We are, in fact, building the agri infrastructure for planetary intelligence. And what that essentially means is that we've started off with a couple of carbon removal methods, primarily focusing on. So one of the methods that we actively focus on is called enhanced rock weathering, which basically means and this is going to be a bit of science. I'll try to still keep it less sciencey, but any silicates, whenever they react with rainwater, rainwater is, again, third book, third grade textbook that any rain is acid rain. It's been acid rain since pre-industrial levels. And whenever rain falls on rocks and soil, rocks and soil have a chemical tendency to weather. And whenever they weather, they remove the carbon from the rain as and they store it as bicarbonate ions. Now, bicarbonate ions are a very stable form storing carbon. This is what creates your seashells and coral reefs when it reaches the ocean. However, weathering as a natural reaction is a very long reaction. It happens over like thousands of years. Unfortunately, we don't have thousand years left to make earth work. So what we do is we accelerate the weathering reactions. We use very simple analogies. When you put a lollipop in your mouth versus cotton candy, cotton candy dissolves really fast. Why? Because it has high surface area. That's exactly what we do with rocks. We take rocks, a certain kind of rocks with all parameters mapped out with very high surface area, talcum powder size. We ensure that it has enough surface area to also react with rain. And then we ensure that the measurements across different phases of soil, climate, etc. are modelled in a way that we can produce verifiable carbon removal credits through rock weathering.

Dhruv Sharma: So you found a way to accelerate a natural chemical process?

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): Yes, practically.

Dhruv Sharma: And also in terms of trade, so you're saying planting more trees doesn't work. I know Bill Gates is no fan of planting trees, but which side are you on? Is reforestation or does it work? Does it not work?

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): I think all methods are required. I think even it's also important to avoid carbon emissions and focus on that as well as also plant more trees. But the only problem is that how do you ensure that you hit your targets as fast as possible? And that's why there has always has to be a focus on innovation. One of our company's motto is, you know, create abundance. And so we always keep advocating for the fact that it's important to not think about scarcity and it's important to do more. So with respect to methods as well, do as much as possible, be it planting trees, be it avoid, be it rock weathering, be it do DAG, all methods are welcome. And are you dialing in from Darjeeling today? Today I'm in Bangalore. So we have a labs in both Bangalore and Darjeeling. But yes, half of the month I'm in Darjeeling.

Utsav Somani: Tell us about your flagship Darjeeling project. You're doing something interesting there, working with, I mean, all the talent there and also trying to do cultural restoration. So how does it all come together? Tell us more about the numbers and the project and describe it.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): Sure. So Sparsh and I, we are fourth generation tea planters. We've been in Darjeeling for some time now. Our family has tea gardens spread across different regions in Darjeeling and Bengal. We were both doing very different things in life. I think for us, starting with carbon came from a position of wanting to save the tea garden because the Darjeeling tea gardens are in a state of financial crisis for the last decade. And there are multiple market link factors associated with it. So we spent a lot of time studying all the methods out there in terms of how can we create additional source of income. The first step was that we shifted from Kolkata to Darjeeling and we rebuilt our house there. We, in fact, named it Second Chance House to give Darjeeling a second chance to give the tea garden a second chance and everyone and anyone who visits us a second chance. We still live there, our family, our primary work groups are there. And I think after living there, we connected with the community. We understood, you know, what are the main problems. And we realized that the second step has to be that we sell the tea directly to consumers. And we look at the middle players and make some more additional revenue for the tea garden. That's when we started. Dorje Tea is doing fairly well now, has become, you know, has ensured that we are able to save our tea garden. And the third step was we wanted to spend some time on the carbon markets to be able to understand how can we create additional source of income even beyond Dorje Teas for the tea garden and for for neighboring tea gardens. And Sparsh and I were doing other things in life while we were trying to figure this out. But at that point, we realized that, you know, most of the avoidance credits are very difficult to ensure the scientific rigor behind it. And being a chemistry major, it was it was difficult for me to build confidence in the avoidance methods or in the nature based methods. And I think that's when we focused on only science first methods and read a lot about, you know, how rock weathers, you know, we performed a lot of experiments at ISC Bangalore. So our primary office is within ISC Bangalore. Our chief scientist, you know, is also part of ISC Bangalore. And I think at that point, we realized that Darjeeling offers a perfect regime for rocks to weather. You're on the foothills of Himalayas, you have subtropical temperatures, you have high rainfall, you have high humidity, you have cation rich soil. And rock requires all of these parameters to weather faster, because only when rocks will weather will you be able to get carbon credits. Only when you create carbon credits will you be able to deliver and realize that revenue. And every single business model that we try to focus on, you know, we need we ensure that it is backable, it is bankable as well. And so that is something that we really focused on. The Darjeeling Revival Project is about reviving Darjeeling and the neighboring, you know, the adjacent farming sectors of rice, bamboo, maize alongside tea. So I think we've already expanded to around 30,000 acres. We often say this in the U.S. that that's the size of San Francisco. And and this is all onboarded from lands through by our own team without using any FPOs. And in the future, I think next year's target is to onboard around 100,000 acres and to ensure that we create the largest carbon sink possible.

Utsav Somani: And also, I mean, these 100,000 acres, what does it mean? Like how many credits do you get? What is the output? Like, I mean, are you measuring in just credits or in dollar terms? Of course, I'm guessing prices are volatile as well.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): Yeah. So on average, so we produce the cheapest or it's the most cost effective carbon removal credits in the world are costs in the world. Yes. In the world. So per acre pricing for us is around 400 dollars. That's an average that we can make realized over three years. So, yeah, 30,000 acres would mean around 12 million dollars realized over three years. And and that's something that we already have forward contracts for for the entire inventory right now. And these contracts are from Stripe, Shopify, Google, Mitsui, USK Alliance, NexGen, etc.

Dhruv Sharma: Sree, by virtue of being in Darjeeling, have you have you learned I mean, what have you guys learned from the local community about soil restoration that you now bring into your work? Sure.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): I think we work with two. So if I were to divide the community, there would be two large categories. The first one would be the large tea plantations who also employ like on an average, every tea plantation employs around 1000 to 2000 people. And then the second category would be the smallholder marginal farmers who are like the rice paddy farmers. On an average, they have around half an acre or one third of an acre. And I think we while we work with both of them, we realize that both of these categories have very different problems that they face. So the first time we do these Vigyan Krishi Sabhas, which primarily means science, agricultural town halls with all of our community members. And what we realized for the first time when we spoke to them is that most of the second category farmers don't even know what, you know, an ag lime means, what a limestone or dolomite means to be able to really, you know, even utilize the soil pH. So the example that I had to give them is that, you know, even if our stomachs face acidity and one has to pop a medicine to, you know, focus on the acidity going away. And that those are the examples that you have to give like real world examples to help them explain how your soil amendments will help their soil. And I think even beyond this, what we essentially do is we do large scale health service to understand because rock welding as a procedure has a very win-win scenario. Why we're able to onboard so many farmers so fast is because we're not selling to farmers anything. We're practically giving them free soil nutrients, which they apply on their soil and they get.

Dhruv Sharma: This is what you call Hari Mitti, if I'm not mistaken.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): Yeah, we call it Hari Mitti. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So and they've seen like a huge increase in rice. On an average, we've seen around 30 to 40 percent increase and that number is extremely huge and practically because historically, you know, Indian agriculture and Indian soil conditions have been very depleted when it comes to soil organic carbon, when it comes to pH, when it comes to NPK, which are extremely essential for for crops to grow. And with tea gardens as well, it took me a lot of time to even convince my family that what we are saying is actually possible. So we had to do a lot of pilot, you know, field scale pilot studies, a lot of number crunching to convince folks that this is working. And even beyond everything else, what actually worked for us in terms of getting communities trust is just real results. And once results started flowing and once people could see that crop yield is growing in tea, we've seen around 10 to 15 percent crop yield increase because it already used to use some amount of soil amendments. But I think across both of these categories, once word of mouth started spreading, it became very easy for us to onboard folks and to get their trust.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, regulations, I mean, zooming out a little bit, regulations in India versus globally, do they play catch up usually or it's I mean, in most forward looking industries like yours, they're always playing catch up. But how are the regulators or how are the regulations involved in your industry?

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): I think India has been quite advanced when it comes to the carbon markets. India historically has been one of the largest global producers of the carbon avoidance credits. And when it comes to removal as well, India has been ahead. There's been a recent announcement of a partnership between India and Japan, which is on a joint creating mechanism, which oil carbon was also a part of where India and Japan will be working together on creating more credits and ensuring that the transition happens smoothly. I think for us, for India, we should be.

Utsav Somani: And we lost. It's possible.

Dhruv Sharma: Oops. All right. This is as live a show as it gets. So this is the closest I'm ever going to get in life to feeling like Elvis Presley, while we're literally holding hands.

Utsav Somani: It all happens.

Dhruv Sharma: Straight back. We lost you there for a bit. Yeah, so I was just saying that I think you're going to have to start all the way from the start. No, no, no, no, just kidding, man. Yeah.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): OK, so I think in India, I was just completing my point that I think in India we should be looking at the carbon markets as a way to to mobilize, you know, climate finance. We have a very unique ability to create this financial instrument called the carbon credit at the cheapest way possible, at the most scalable way possible. And we have the possibility or the ability to actually meet the demand that exists worldwide. And that is what we as a country should see as like a manufacturing sector opportunity before some other countries start subsidizing, you know, the businesses that create carbon credits. I think we should be thinking a little bit. We should be ahead compared to other countries when it comes to the carbon markets. And I think India has been doing a fairly good job there.

Utsav Somani: And Indian businesses, they're a big consumer or purchasers of these credits.

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): I think for the Indian businesses to start purchasing carbon credits, it has to be it is going to be important for companies like us to get the costs down, because when it comes to carbon removal credits, they are really costly. On an average, the entire carbon removal sector has an average pricing of around seven hundred dollars. We are very, very cheap when it comes to the average pricing. But I think for us as well, the target is and going with the philosophy of abundance, can we get the costs down to under a hundred dollars? And that is something that we're constantly focusing on. Once that happens, we definitely see Indian corporates will be starting purchase of such credits. And there are already compliances coming in, which are sector specific, geography specific, for example, sector specific like Corsair, which is for the aviation sector. I am more for the shipping sector and the geography specific compliances that will come in for India as well. But that's still a few decades away. But cost driving that down is a focus for us at the moment.

Dhruv Sharma: Maybe one last question before we let you go. Why is climate action so important for the Global South?

Shrey Agarwal (Alt Carbon): For green transition, that is the that's that's more of a financial financial POV. But of course, at the same time, when we do think about creating abundance, it is important that we identify where can that truly be done. And Global South clearly has all the advantages going for it. And that's the reason why we feel that it can become like a world leader in the carbon markets. So financial transition is one. The other is the ability to innovate and the ability to to even produce things at scale, be it carbon credits, be it methane credits or be it green infrastructure.

Utsav Somani: Awesome, Shrey, thank you for tuning in. Hope to see you make great progress and welcome you back on the show soon. Thanks, Ash.

Dhruv Sharma: Thanks, Shrey.

Utsav Somani: Cheers. Awesome. I hope you've learned as much as I did. And Dhruv, of course, knows a lot more about this. He's a science geek, but Hari Mitti and all the new to me to brush up on my sciences again. But welcoming our next guest, Prashant, he's leading a company very unique to India. And I mean, I don't even know that spiritual tech could be a category. And he's finding new monetization models. He's digitizing religion and bringing the power of faith in your pockets for a billion Indians. So very interesting. And I'd love to learn more from him. Let's welcome Prashant. What's happening? Where in the world are you tuning in from? Oh, Bangalore. OK, I keep seeing your updates on Instagram. You're always at a new part of the country. And I mean, I learned a lot because of that as well. So Shri Mandir, it taps spirituality and faith. Do you think digital religion can scale in India?

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): I think it depends on how you look at it. So I'll tell you how my users look at it. So we are in a country where most of the two kind of users are people who people who are practitioners. So I'll call them as devouts and then the users who are utilitarian in their minds. For a major part of devouts, you'll find that their wallpapers will be some God images, for example. So people are finding different, different ways to be in touch with their faith and their practices for that matter. And I feel there are enough indicators around us where you'll see the largest in most of the apps which are on wallpapers. The largest downloaded category would be devotion, for example, or there are many, many more of these examples. So the way I think about this is people are looking consistently for ways in which they can be in touch with what they believe in. And we are digital is just a mechanism to constantly reinforce what their practices are, what their values are, give them access to either information, services, products, whatever it is. So it's just an access problem that we are solving.

Utsav Somani: Interesting. And you're monetizing via ads and commerce. I mean, these are, I mean, different models. And you figured out, I mean, how this works at scale. Tell us a little bit about how Srimander actually makes money from user scale. Sure.

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): So I think I'll give you a quick view of what Srimander does and what's the value prop. And then I'll come to the part around how, what do people pay us for? So I'll help you understand what do we mean to a devout user. So a devout user is looking for devotional information. He's looking for ways to connect to temples and pilgrimages that they believe in, get their services, get products, are the few ways in which they would want to connect to their belief systems. The other part is on of this value chain is temples. Now, in India, there are quite a few temples in millions, I would say. There are 10,000 of them which are culturally and historically very, very relevant, but not all of them are popular. The popular temples in India, which would be getting, let's say, 10 to 20K plus daily footfall will be 100, 150 temples, for example. Now, there are enough temples who are looking for platforms like us where they can reach out to more people. So there are three things that we help temples with. One, think of us as a way where they can build relationship with their devotees, existing ones. Also, find new ones, be able to offer their services to them digitally or build newer mechanisms together with us to offer those services. So this is how we help these temples. Now, what do users pay us for? So we do not charge any money from the temples. It's a free platform for the temple site. When we go to a temple, I'll give you an example. There's this beautiful shrine in Nashik, which is called Chandisha Garhpati. Chandisha Garhpati, during the recent festive days, did not have a way where they could provide prasad to their devotees in a good packaged way. We went to them and said, hey, you are a very important institution and people in this region believe in you and people who have moved out also believe in you. Let us invest together with you and beautifully package this prasad. Now, this prasad was available to people who are going there offline. It was also available on our platform. It was also the best selling item on Instamart. So imagine this temple was able to figure out a newer way to reach out to their devotees, serve and be able to generate revenue. And of course, when we go and work with these temples, we take our platform fee from the devotees. So this is, let's say, one way of monetizing. The other way is people are looking for offering goods and services at some of these temples. For example, Pitrabhaksha is going on and there are many people who believe that this is a period when they should pray to their ancestors. And Gaya is an important place. We have many of these priests in those communities who are working with us to be able to offer these things digitally because not everyone can make it. That city cannot handle more people visiting them during this period. So this digital mechanism is a way where people are able to do those offerings through our platform. What we trust, why they trust us is because we ensure that the services are delivered. There's a video proof. They could join it live stream and they can also get things back from those places. And for that, we take a platform fee from the users. That's how we monetize. We do not monetize by ads. We primarily monetize through our platform cut via these services that we offer.

Dhruv Sharma: Prashant, the last time we met was before the Mahakumbh. Yeah, and I have meaning to ask you, how did that one single event, what did it mean for your company? How did it change things?

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): So honestly, it was an event for the people to know of what devotion and spirituality still means to the nation. When 60 crore people go and go over a month to this particular place and people across stratas, people across, I would say, if I were to segment the society across status bands, so usually there are larger belief systems that, hey, people like this would not be devoted, would not be doing this, doing that, and so on. I think that myth broke. So I think it was more of a validation where people in general used to believe, and especially in circuits like Bangalore or Gurgaon, primarily the tech chanta used to believe that, hey, devotion is a declining behavior. Having traveled to so many temples, what I carefully observe is how people are queuing up to get a darshan, for example, and what do they look like? What would be their age? What kind of clothes they're wearing? My belief was always that this is not a declining trend in any way. It's picking up. Mahakumar was a very clear demonstration in a way where people realize that it still matters to them. Cultural anchoring matters to so many people in this country. So I would say it was more of a open validation of how large this need is. For us, it also got us, we also launched many things during Mahakumar, it also got us new users and so on. So for us, growth has been happening consistently with these festivals, without these festivals.

Dhruv Sharma: Strong validation. And go ahead.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, I mean, interesting that you mentioned that, I mean, it plays as a catalyst, but without that also, right, India's so many mini India's within itself, like do you build differently for these mini India's or different regions of India? Or, I mean, the platform is consistent, it's just, I mean, is consistent and people can adapt to their own workflows.

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): Oh, 100%. I think there are four or five key personas that are there when it comes to people who believe in some of these cultural practices. With Shree Mandirap, we are, we are going very, very deep into this one set of people who would go to a temple on their own. I'm not talking about people who are pulled by their parents. I'm talking about people who have this drive to ever go to a temple at whatever frequency is my user. And Shree Mandir is being built for that user. And earlier we were thinking of covering segments, which would not fall into this category. But right now we realize that this is deep enough, the platform has to be extremely deep to be able to solve this particular user and serve them well. So the focus is going deep as compared to wide. And I'll give you examples. Roughly 25-30% of our demand comes from outside of India and those users are, they are lookalikes of what some of these core behaviors are looking in India right now. So it's more about people who believe in these practices, believe in what would go to a temple, whether they're living in a Bangalore or whether they're living in a Lucknow or whether they're living in Texas, they behave in similar ways.

Utsav Somani: And Gen Z's, I mean, the or the Gen Alphas, do you see them being as devoted or paying attention to the gods and the faith market in a way that their parents have? Or do you think like with each passing generation, we're losing that art and culture?

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): See, I think, again, the lens that we are looking at it has to, I mean, I'll clean up that lens in a bit. So when we look at Gen Z's, the coffee rave market, for example, is not a representation of what Gen Z's across the country is. So I think we are often when we also also look at any age band based segmentation across the country, we look at the most vocal set of people or the most socially visible set of people. My only point is that this might not be the representation of what the country looks like. And there are a lot of young people. So the frequency of usage might not be as high. The frequency of engagement might not be as high, but they do practice, they do believe. It's a I think frequency changes with age bands, but the beliefs stay and also it's it's also priorities in life. When you are in a certain age band, your priority is find a partner, date and so on. And then as you go to a more stable zone in your personal relationships, professional relationships, you try to seek meaning. I think life is nothing but Maslow's put together in the hierarchy. So when people get to a certain age band, they start looking inwards as compared to outwards. And that's what I'll tell you. One very interesting data point is I think you can go and do it independently, where you go on this deep research mode and and do this query where pick a city like Varanasi and pick a city which is, let's say, the most popular city in this country for leisure travel, for example, and pick any one of them. And look at the look at in the last 10 years, how the number of flights have increased or decreased in those towns to look at. The newer cities that were added, the newer airlines that were added, it will give you a very clear indicator that what's happening on the spiritual tourism part. I'll give you an example. I was in Madhya Pradesh meeting the tourism authorities very recently, and they told me that 70% of the tourism in Madhya Pradesh is directly attributed to devotion. And I was also trying to understand the age band. 25 to 35 is in terms of visitors is similar to 35 to 45. So that that was slightly shocking.

Dhruv Sharma: And what are what are pressing data and what I've heard a lot of households in India, a spiritual journey was the original social sanction for going on holiday. Because if you said must be You may or may not get permission. But if you're going So one question for you, Prashant. So Madhya Pradesh is interesting. But what's also interesting is the Himalayas, which have a very high concentration of places of worship. And it's also ecologically speaking, a very, very fragile ecosystem. And so do you think Shri Mandir will come to play a role where especially periods like the one we're going through right now floods. It's, it's, it's like I said, it's a very fragile ecosystem. It's dangerous to be there right now. But people still want to connect with their faith. Is, is Shri Mandir a great bridge for those those periods.

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): That's what right. This is what my consistent messaging to many people is that I'll give you a, again, I'll give you a perspective of Madhya Pradesh itself for you to understand what is over tourism. Now, Mahakaal in Ujjain is the most popular temple in that state and that is suffering from over tourism. Now what is happening is There's lack of awareness in the many of these temples, which could be as popular as Mahakaal. But their story has not been told that well. Now this is one part where how do you evenly distribute that traffic by popularizing other places. Part number one. Part number two is How do you, of course, keep people in touch is the second part. Now, I definitely feel that there are two parts to this right. One is when I would want to go there. How much tourism should I allow, should I allow. We should not be on a certain point because That place and its sanctity and and the ecological balance is more important than me having gone there and and done my prayers. That place has to sustain for the next decades and centuries and so on. This continues, it will not, it is not going to happen. So I think we should definitely do a capping. How do you still serve the people who would want to. Hence, investment in Jyotindra, supporting companies like us to be able to enable a lot more services there. Now the second part is also very, very important. The challenge, the bigger challenge is Let's say in this particular period, the people will be struggling in there because because there's no tourism right now. So the key families whose Whose households are dependent on that tourism income don't have any income for the next many, many months. So an online access will solve both of these problems in a beautiful way. And I think this should be systematically impaneled. There should be more charters around it. There should be more work policy work around that. How do you use a platform like me to be able to balance out attraction and also Cap it out to a point where you're still able to serve a lot many people.

Dhruv Sharma: And Prashant, when you approach, I would say influential bodies and authority figures at temples. But the assumption would be they they have a somewhat traditional mindset and here you're talking about something entirely new. How's that part of the business played out? I mean, there are playbooks for selling to schools and hospitals and banks, but temples. And that's why we'll be a very large company.

Utsav Somani: Very, very large company. No, but one final question before we let you go, Prashant and end the show. Astrology, a lot has been written about that and not science.

Prashant Sacha (AppsForBharat): What's your take People believe in it and the way it has to be served has to be served to be able to help them and not utilize the insecurities. So there's a fine line. See, I actually feel it in many ways, right? I think not everything that we humans do is scientific. There are a lot many things which are inward, which are in the mind, could not be explained through scientific frameworks. I think as a job, the job of builder is to be is to serve people without doing judgments and serve them right. So I think the way I look at is my job is to build for my users, serve their needs, serve their needs in the right way without judging whether that need is superior or inferior, but being right by the user is important. And that's the key fundamental principle that we are operating from. Now, when it comes to astrology, my business take from my company is that we're not, we're of course, we're enabling tools for people to be able to fetch this. So there are two parts of the equation in astrology. One is analysis, second is interpretation, third one is companionship. We're not going into the companionship part. Analysis is a age old method. And I think with the with the rise of AI, you can do it very, very well, you can do it better than humans, because these are certain texts, which can help you with the analysis in a far better way than a human astrologer will. We definitely are interested in the analysis part of it. I think there are enough number of ways to be able to build repeat engagement on top of it. So companionship is interesting, but I think doesn't align with the way we are building this.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in Prashant and educating us. All the best and more power to you. 100% Thank you so much guys. All the best Prashant. All right, listeners, thank you for tuning in. Sorry for all the minor glitches that we had along the way, but I hope you've had fun hearing from these two awesome category creators. These are the kind of builders that you'll hear from every time you tune in to TON. And if this episode gets 500 likes or even 100 likes, less 200 likes, Dhruv will have to cosplay as Elvis Presley next time because he mentioned that name. All right. Have a wonderful weekend and see you on Monday. Cheers.