Time To Unshackle?

Young India Is Obsessed With Apps. But The Gateway To Them Is Closely Guarded By Two Tech Behemoths-google And Apple-who Control 99% Of The Market In India. Is It Time For India To Break Free From This Duopoly And Have Its Own App Store?

- DANNY CYRIL DCRUZE

ON MARCH 1, 2024, Google pulled 10 popular Indian mobile apps— Bharat Matrimony, Jeevansathi, Naukri.com, 99acres, Shaadi. com, Truly Madly, QuackQuack, Stage, Altt, and Kuku FM—due to payment policy violations from its Play Store, only to reinstate them. Since then, there has been much discussion on the need for an Indian app store to break up the Google-Apple duopoly.

The tech giants dominate the app world—Google’s Android enjoys 94.94% market share in India, and Apple’s iOS has a 4.22% share.

“Indian companies will comply—for now. But what India needs is an App Store/Play Store that is a part of the Digital Public Infrastructure—like UPI and ONDC. The response needs to be strategic,” wrote Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Info Edge—which runs Jeevansathi, Naukri.com, 99acres, among others—on microblogging site X, tagging Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, soon after the incident. And he wasn’t the only one from India Inc. advocating for an Indian app store.

This isn’t the first time Google removed an app from India from its Play Store. In 2020, it had pulled fintech app Paytm for a few hours, citing violations of policies. After a few months, Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma launched a mini app store within the Paytm app to reduce its reliance on Google. Sharma has been vocal about developing an Indian app store since.

From purchasing a toothbrush to obtaining an AI certification, apps are available for almost everything. And India, the second-largest smartphone user market after China, recorded a staggering 25.96 billion app downloads on mobile devices in 2023 and generated good revenue (