For as long as I can remember, Google’s Play Store for Android and Apple’s App Store for iOS have held a monopoly and are the only go-to app stores. Not many have stood the test of time against these two. But what if I told you that there’s an Indian alternative to these app stores now? Yes, you heard me right, PhonePe has launched the Indus Appstore in an attempt to take over the AppStore and the Play Store.
The Indus Appstore was launched yesterday in New Delhi in the presence of IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, and several startup founders, including Dream Sports’ Harsh Jain and ixigo’s Aloke Bajpai.
Also read: PhonePe just launched free App Store to rival Google Play Store: Why it’s special
In a statement, Indus Appstore revealed that they will host more than 2 Lakh apps across 45 categories including many Indian brands, including Zomato, Myntra, Domino’s, Flipkart, Dream11, Swiggy, etc.
Sameer Nigam PhonePe founder and chief executive said, “Indus Appstore challenges the status quo, ushering in an era of more healthy competition in the mobile app marketplace, which in turn should help create a more democratic and vibrant Indian digital ecosystem.”
But how is this Indus Appstore different from the Google Play store and the Apple App Store?
The major difference between the three of them is that Indus will not charge developers any platform fee or commission for in-app payments. The developers will also be free to integrate any payment gateway as per their choice inside their apps. This issue has been spoken about for a while now.
Harsh Jain, Dream11 CEO says, “Apple, Google, and all these global play stores are bound by business models which they apply globally by features, policies and regulations, and they’re a bit of a black box, and we don’t know why. I think, for us to have an Indian app store which is made for India, by India…will really help us to be creative.”
