Bipin Preet Singh is the founder and CEO of Mobikwik, a mobile services platform in India. He discusses the need to improve India's mobile application ecosystem by attracting more developers, understanding consumer trends, and enabling stores and payment options. Partnerships between independent platforms and telecom companies can help engage developers, pilot new apps, and gain insights into consumer behavior to grow the market for mobile apps in India.
Enabling the Mobile Application Ecosystem in India
1. ENABLING THE MOBILE APPLICATION
ECOSYSTEM IN INDIA
Bipin Preet Singh
Founder CEO
CII Summit
13 Nov, 2010
Follow us @ twitter.com/mobikwik
2. Who am I?
Bipin Preet Singh
Founder CEO, www.mobikwik.com
B.Tech (EE) IIT Delhi 2002
8 years in Consumer Hardware products
Stints at Intel, NVIDIA, Freescale
3. What is MobiKwik.com?
Direct to Consumer web platform for
mobile services, Live since Aug 2009
Example of mobile services
Mobile Recharge
Mobile Bill payment
Mobile Apps
Mobile Content
What we do best?
Kick Ass customer experience
Independent, open access, user discovery model
Monetization
4. Apps – Why should we care?
Mobile Hardware is now a commodity
– differentiation lies in software
Apps represent the primary software
opportunity on the Mobile
– worth billions of dollars
Mobile apps will drive data usage especially
with 3G
6. The Ecosystem in India Today
So WHO are we missing?
We need more Enablers
App Stores
Web downloads
Commissioned apps
Offline Retail
To build the Mobile Apps Economy…..
7. Demand India
Country Current Period Previous Period Trend
Indonesia 14,454,167 13,736,562 5%
India 8,661,600 7,774,230 11%
United States 4,817,565 3,815,531 26%
United Kingdom 1,356,746 1,400,482 3%
Egypt 1,280,035 1,216,057
5%
South Africa 1,263,530 1,240,341
2%
Source: Getjar.com Jan 2010
8. Supply India
Many cutting edge apps on the iPhone
AppStore are developed by Indian
companies
either branded
or white-label
So, why aren’t enough apps being
developed for the Indian consumer?
9. What developers care about?
Size of the market
Development Infrastructure
Market feedback
Time (or headache) to market & payouts
10. Therefore,
Developers mostly not interested in
developing for Indian market.
Consumer gets old generation apps with poor
provisioning.
And the cycle continues ....
12. Unlearn the lessons of MVAS
Apps are not ringtones or wallpapers!
Apps are not a single mass market
‘Push’ model won’t work
‘Search’, ‘Discoverability’ and
‘Provisioning’ matter
Understand the ‘Long Tail’ of mobile apps
13. Attract the best developers
The best mobile developers don’t work
for you – Accept the truth.
Make Rev share attractive. ( hint: 20% cut
after 3 months does not work)
Create the feedback loop.
Create and Promote the developer brand.
14. Emerging market trends
“But unlike North America, where users with high-end
smartphones are happy to plunk down a few dollars for
a time-killing casual game,
growth in emerging markets will lean more
heavily on productivity apps used by consumers
who don’t have regular fixed-line Internet
service.
And app developers and distributors will be tasked with
finding ways to monetize their wares beyond simple
one-off purchases.”
- Quoted from
gigaom.com
15. Apply Indian Consumer trends
The Indian consumer
is value conscious
is not an impulsive buyer
bases buying decisions on trust (through word of
mouth, internet search and social media)
changes handsets & SIM cards
16. Partner, Partner, Partner
Software and Telecom are
different businesses
Independent players like Mobikwik.com
create multiple advantages:
Developer Engagement
Piloting and Feedback loop
Pulse on Macro and Micro Consumer-trends
17. Q&A
Email me - bipin [at] mobikwik.com
for a copy of this presentation
for partnership meetings
for job opportunities
Follow me on Twitter
twitter.com/mobikwik