After the Ambanis and Tatas of the country, Adanis have also decided to come up with their super-app to provide a common platform for its 400 million end consumers that use the group’s products or services across its business spanning airports, gas, realty, electricity, financial services, and consumer products.
This isn’t the first time we Indians are seeing such hype around super-apps. But what is so tempting about a super-app that all the big shots of the country are leaning towards it? Isn’t it better to have a separate clean app for every different function and not have those apps at all which you don’t need? Let’s try to unravel all this, starting with what a super-app really means:
In the simplest of terms, A super app is a platform developed by a company offering various services under one umbrella. Typically, companies that have a slew of services and products to offer tend to consolidate these offerings into a super app. What does this get them? An increased engagement time with its customers!
And the hype around the super-apps was started by China – when WeChat, a messenger, morphed its billion-plus user app into an ecosystem of services that includes taxi rides, payments/virtual wallets, hotel reservations, games, medical consultations and more.
Let’s take another example. Amazon.
When Amazon came up with miniTV, it raised many eyebrows, especially the ones who use amazon Prime! Catching up the growing popularity of TVF shows and other Indian content is fine, but why not just stream them on Prime itself?
Well, with launch of just one add-on in its already existing app, it added another soldier in the battle to keep consumers engaged with it for nearly everything. All this while raking in more ad dollars as miniTV was an ad-supported streaming service as opposed to ad-free Prime!
Recently, Amazon also integrated Amazon Pay into its Amazon shopping app – because hey, when you can pay all your bills at one place, why bother having two separate apps? Especially when your smartphone is already out of storage! And those individual passwords and sifting constantly through a library of apps to find the one that you need for your specific task.. Uh!
Well, Super apps does take all that headache off your mind and it is in the best interest of a user to have one-app-does-it-all experience. But what is in it for the companies exactly? Why are brands like Paytm, Phonepe, Jio, etc foraying into super-app business when they already have a pretty good presence?
Well, let’s just admit that brands are addicted to “customer stickiness”. Going back to example of Amazon miniTV: Consider a new user at Amazon app. He came there for shopping stuff, bumped into miniTv, started watching some series. As he spends more and more time on the same app every day to finish his series, his mind is getting addicted to the app – sounds crazy right? Not so much! When Amazon allows you to pay all your bills at one stop and provides lucrative cashbacks for every payment you make, it is essentially making you a repetitive customer of the app. As you switch to Amazon app more number of times in a day for different purposes, your mind space is filled with Amazon and its products. Before you know it, you are using its prime service as well – buying that credit card off Amazon so that you get 5% off every single purchase – sending money to your friends through the app – playing games on the same app! More glued you are to the app, more likely are you to increase the frequency and money value of purchase you make through the app – because your brain trusts that app now! Also, more the number of customers, more sellers Amazon attracts and more ad revenue it can raise – Cha-Ching!!
What Amazon essentially tried to do here was leverage their competitive advantage of the massive distribution of the app to build and grow other businesses. This is where it is a little different from what the biggest corporates of India are trying to do.
These corporates already have a number of businesses running parallelly and a super-app for them means bringing all the business together on one platform for its users. Do you trust Tatas? Well, here’s an app for you where you get access to all the things you need – medicines, groceries, clothes, watches and more – from the house of Tatas.
Now, as we mention time and again at Finns&Marks – India is a numbers game. India is a very populated country but a poor one. You need to fit an average Indian’s needs into the most affordable and effective manner so that they are attracted to you. So, when we see the likes of Jio, Tatas & Ambanis getting into the game of super apps, it is just to get that portion of mind space of an Indian that you do not want to lose to a competitor. This also helps customers know about their other businesses and saves the companies huge amount of ad dollars. After all, it is interesting to still find people who are unaware that WestSide, Starbucks and Titan watches lie under same umbrella! And if you can get an alcoholic shopper to order coffee(so that she doesn’t get tired) and Aspirin(to digest the heavy shopping bills) from the same app, wouldn’t that be a win-win?