BENGALURU: Indian consumer spending on smartphone apps downloaded from Google Play increased 300% over the past year, Google India has revealed.
The company also said it is now getting one billion downloads, leading it to believe that India’s digital landscape has reached an inflection point that will finally allow app developers to monetise their products, Business Standard reported.
Speaking at its inaugural App Excellence Summit in Bengaluru, Google India’s Managing Director Rajan Anandan said there had been an “incredible” change in the Indian digital market over the last year.
“If there’s one thing that the Indian internet ecosystem has been challenged with, it is monetisation. But we believe that the time has come where we’re beginning to see a change in monetisation in India,” he said.
“What’s happened in the past 10 months is truly incredible and has not been seen in the history of the internet. We’ve [India] literally gone from having a large number of users spending very little time on the internet to having a large number of users spending a lot of time on the internet.”
As the market rapidly expands with millions more smartphone users paying for apps, Anandan urged developers to begin experimenting with different ways to monetise their services.
For its part, Google India is seeking to meet demand by expanding the payment options available on Play Store to include direct carrier billing, digital wallets and digital gift cards, added to more traditional methods.
The company also announced a new “Made in India” initiative, enabling developers to showcase apps optimised for the Indian market in a special section on Google Play Store.
“Made for India is going to be an overarching focus for our team,” said Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development, Games and Applications at Google, in comments reported by the Economic Times.
“We found that there is a group of developers who are really thinking about big macro India problems and we want to celebrate that as well as inspire more developers to really think about solving for the India market,” she added.
The company also said it is now getting one billion downloads, leading it to believe that India’s digital landscape has reached an inflection point that will finally allow app developers to monetise their products, Business Standard reported.
Speaking at its inaugural App Excellence Summit in Bengaluru, Google India’s Managing Director Rajan Anandan said there had been an “incredible” change in the Indian digital market over the last year.
“If there’s one thing that the Indian internet ecosystem has been challenged with, it is monetisation. But we believe that the time has come where we’re beginning to see a change in monetisation in India,” he said.
“What’s happened in the past 10 months is truly incredible and has not been seen in the history of the internet. We’ve [India] literally gone from having a large number of users spending very little time on the internet to having a large number of users spending a lot of time on the internet.”
As the market rapidly expands with millions more smartphone users paying for apps, Anandan urged developers to begin experimenting with different ways to monetise their services.
For its part, Google India is seeking to meet demand by expanding the payment options available on Play Store to include direct carrier billing, digital wallets and digital gift cards, added to more traditional methods.
The company also announced a new “Made in India” initiative, enabling developers to showcase apps optimised for the Indian market in a special section on Google Play Store.
“Made for India is going to be an overarching focus for our team,” said Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development, Games and Applications at Google, in comments reported by the Economic Times.
“We found that there is a group of developers who are really thinking about big macro India problems and we want to celebrate that as well as inspire more developers to really think about solving for the India market,” she added.
Data sourced from Business Standard, Economic Times; additional content by WARC staff
