With the Tatas set to acquire Big Basket, the Super App concept has gained traction in India. But what is this Super App? In simple terms, Super App is a one stop destination for a user under one app itself, to manage a bouquet of services / operations like book flights tickets or a movie ticket or book a restaurant table and along with that have a payment gateway on top of it. This makes it an end-to-end solution for a user without the hassle to manage and operate on several apps.
Simply put, Super App is like a virtual shopping mall where all products and services are available under one roof.
Let us understand the concept with an example:
Is this a new concept? No!
The concept of Super App was started in China primarily by WeChat. What WeChat offers is one app catering to multiple needs: food ordering, shopping, messaging, social media, cab services, payments - to name a few.
However, this concept is not yet popular in the West – may be due to regulatory environment and market conditions. However, Google Maps can be an example of a Super App – It provides directions, search and book hotels, petrol pump stations, local events, book a cab or reserve a restaurant table.
Few Super App Examples from East:
Grab: Singapore based cab hailing company – acquired local division of Uber and Uber Eats (now GrabFresh). It also has payments services (GrabPay). Apart from that it provides micro-loans to drivers
Line: Japanese based messaging app – also offers: cab services (Line Taxi), news channels, stickers, gaming (Line Games), food delivery (Line Wow), retail shopping (Line Shopping) and payment services (Line Pay)
Go-jek: Indonesia based cab hailing company – a regional competitor of Grab
Alipay: Chinese payment app offering multifold services like retail shopping, bookings, utility bill payments, etc
Finfact: In 2010, BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis was the first to coin the term – Super App. He defined it as “a closed ecosystem of many apps” that people would use every day because they offer such a seamless, integrated, contextualized and efficient experience.”
Will a Super App make life simple? Indeed.
For the Users:
One report suggests, that 83% of Indian Smartphone users delete Apps to free up storage space! A single app which caters to the needs of multiple app will be a boon to the users in terms of saving storage space.
Availability of multiple products and services under one roof.
For the Developers:
Faster launches of new products: If say Tata wants to launch a new product, it can use the same app to market the product which will lead to faster penetration of the product in the market.
Lower Development Cost: One app will cater to all the products and services leading to lower app development cost.
Minimum KYC: Since payment banks / wallets / loan applications are part of a Super App, it leads to simplification of KYC requirements at the Developer end.
Any Indian players having a Super App? For sure Yes!
This is no doubt an evolving and an exciting space and India is becoming a rising nation for Super Apps with Tata, Reliance Jio, PayTm, and Flipkart in the fray.
Please do drop in your comments on the article in the link below:
Second lastly, do not forget to share the article with your friends and family!
And lastly, do subscribe to FinFacts! :-)
Very insightful !