The Indian Superapp Consumer

Two years ago, when Tapzo shutdown, it had already acquired 5 million customers. Testimonies of the love — an impressive rating of 4.5 on the Play Store. It had identified a core problem that the Indian Internet Consumer faced — “Phone mein space nhi” (There’s no space in the phone). Tapzo was an app aggregator and it had listed a mini version of all the major apps in itself — Amazon, Ola, Uber, Swiggy, Zomato, Airtel, and many more. You could use them all, without the need to install them. Although Tapzo closed its operations, the "Superapp strategy" continues to live on.

Indians boast about 600 million smartphones. Not surprisingly, a majority of these smartphones are entry level ones (and that’s how Xiaomi tapped the right spot — but let’s talk about that story next week). Problems with an entry level smartphone? You can only have this much space. Keeping numerous apps installed not just slows down the device, but also means a tough trade-off between what to keep and what to delete.

But are you sure about superapps? You can’t just cram all the apps in one single app, that’s probably a bad user experience. Besides, functionalities of each app will be limited too.

Of course, they will be. As a matter of fact, superapps are indeed a bad idea in some parts of the world. But, in some other parts, well, they’re doing wonders. To understand why, let’s just rewind 20 years. The Internet was a sensation in the US — with millions of users having access to it, and millions more enrolling to it — consuming more and more digital products and services. An American consumer has been using internet for decades now. Even in the early days, every website had something for him — and with enough options, he developed a taste. A special love for the ones that exhibited a great UX. There. The key to differentiate at the US — have a great UX.

Turn the globe halfway, and you reach Asia — the masses living in the Indian subcontinent, and China. The internet was still a luxury there.

Let’s observe the Indian consumer carefully. Majority of them never used the internet before Jio. Even among the ones who did use, most still were wary about their data-usage. An Indian consumer (and I’m not just talking about you who’s reading this post, wearing a white collar, living in a metro) is happy when he can get things done on the internet. A separate app to accommodate the best possible UX and heavy features is nice to have, but this consumer doesn’t have enough space. Neither has he developed a taste. He is satisfied, getting the basic things done — being able to stream videos, being able to play songs, being able to do a video call with his loved ones far away, and many more.

And that’s why Superapps seem to hit the right spot in Asia. That’s why WeChat exploded in China with 1.1 billion Monthly Active Users. That’s why Grab is valued ~$15B. That’s why investors are rushing to Go-Jek. That’s why Flipkart, Amazon, PayTM and many more are diversifying their services on their apps.

The question is, is this consumer behaviour going to persist in the long term? Thoughts?

#SuperApp