State of Indian Consumer Apps: Have we stopped producing good Apps?

I love to keep an eye on App trends in India so I thought of sharing a not so happy analysis for Indian B2C App based startups.

India downloaded 6.2 Billion Apps in 2016 (Data Source: AppAnnie). That’s a lot and it made India no.1 globally. But does that mean we have a much stronger developer ecosystem now and we are churning some great Apps? The answer sadly is NO. Few graphs below are self explanatory:

Top 300 Apps on Play Store is dominated by global players. Data Source: Play Store Top Free list

The Even more startling fact is that Top 100 has just 2 Indian Startups (One is a part of a mega billion $ Unicorn & another one is led by a global team based in India).

Data Source: Play Store Top Free list

If we have to look at Indian Startups launched in last 2 years then I am afraid the above charts will look even worse :(

While Indian’s may be downloading over 8 billion Apps this year, Indian Apps managed just 1.7bn downloads in last 1 year. Here again the worrying number is just 100 million cumulative installs by all Indian startups put together.

Small time Indie developers did a better job of attracting over 465 million installs. Extrapolated from AppAnnie India download data

India has over 250mn smartphones and mostly connected now, thanks to Jio and other Telcos reducing data costs, but it seems it is not benefiting Indian Apps.

Indians downloaded 31 Apps on an average last year and here is the split of what they downloaded:

Data Based on Total Downloads divided by Total Smartphones multiplied by % share of Apps

So what could be the reasons for no startup managing to generate enough interest among Indians? Do share your views here.

Some of the reasons IMO:

1. We are still not making Apps that can take global Apps head on
2. Games which are very popular among Indians are yet to be dominated by Indian developers. When will we produce good casual games…. sigh :(
3. Interest going down among Indians to download multiple Apps — time for Super Apps to dominate?
4. Indian startups have stopped spending useless money on paid installs — that’s a good sign :)
5. Retention, Active users or transacting users becoming a key focus
6. With FB & Google advertising coming relatively cheaper for International developers, they use it to drive their install numbers globally
7. No Indian startup in last 4 years has attempted to solve a problem big enough for masses to take notice
8. Organic download growth hacks aren’t working anymore — can write a separate one on this later

You can tag me on twitter at twitter.com/deepakabbot or mail me at dabbot@gmail.com

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p.s. Here are Top 50 Indian Apps on Play Store as on 13 Aug 2017

1. My Jio
2. Hotstar
3. Paytm
4. Flipkart
5. My Airtel
6. Jio4G Voice
7. Voot TV
8. Gaana
9. Shopclues
10. Ola Cabs
11. Wynk
12. PhonePe
13. JioCinema
14. Truebalance
15. Dailyhunt
16. JioSecurity
17. GoIbibo
18. Limeroad
19. Jabong
20. Myntra
21. Newspoint
22. Hike
23. IRCTC
24. Airtel TV
25. Sharechat
26. Sun NXT
27. Teen Patti
28. Saavn
29. Teen Patti Gold
30. Bhim
31. Ixigo Train
32. Indian Browser
33. Aaj Tak
34. Book My Show
35. Idea
36. Indian MX Player
37. Byju
38. Voonik
39. Make My Trip
40. ALTBalaji
41. MyVodafone
42. SBI
43. Redbus
44. Hello English
45. World Cricket 2
46. Future Pay
47. SonyLIV
48. 15 Aug Photo
49. Times of India
50. Snapdeal