Bipin Preet Singh is the founder and CEO of Mobikwik, a mobile services platform in India. He discusses the need to improve India's mobile application ecosystem by attracting more developers, understanding consumer trends, and enabling stores and payment options. Partnerships between independent platforms and telecom companies can help engage developers, pilot new apps, and gain insights into consumer behavior to grow the market for mobile apps in India.

1. ENABLING THE MOBILE APPLICATION
ECOSYSTEM IN INDIA
Bipin Preet Singh
Founder CEO
CII Summit
13 Nov, 2010
Follow us @ twitter.com/mobikwik

2. Who am I?
 Bipin Preet Singh
 Founder CEO, www.mobikwik.com
 B.Tech (EE) IIT Delhi 2002
 8 years in Consumer Hardware products
 Stints at Intel, NVIDIA, Freescale

3. What is MobiKwik.com?
 Direct to Consumer web platform for
mobile services, Live since Aug 2009
 Example of mobile services
 Mobile Recharge
 Mobile Bill payment
 Mobile Apps
 Mobile Content
 What we do best?
 Kick Ass customer experience
 Independent, open access, user discovery model
 Monetization

4. Apps – Why should we care?

Mobile Hardware is now a commodity
– differentiation lies in software

Apps represent the primary software
opportunity on the Mobile
– worth billions of dollars

Mobile apps will drive data usage especially
with 3G

5. Mobile Apps Ecosystem
Developers
Supply
Customers
Demand

6. The Ecosystem in India Today

So WHO are we missing?

We need more Enablers

App Stores

Web downloads

Commissioned apps

Offline Retail
To build the Mobile Apps Economy…..

7. Demand India
Country Current Period Previous Period Trend
Indonesia 14,454,167 13,736,562 5%
India 8,661,600 7,774,230 11%
United States 4,817,565 3,815,531 26%
United Kingdom 1,356,746 1,400,482 3%
Egypt 1,280,035 1,216,057
5%
South Africa 1,263,530 1,240,341
2%
Source: Getjar.com Jan 2010

8. Supply India

Many cutting edge apps on the iPhone
AppStore are developed by Indian
companies

either branded

or white-label
So, why aren’t enough apps being
developed for the Indian consumer?

9. What developers care about?

Size of the market

Development Infrastructure

Market feedback

Time (or headache) to market & payouts

10. Therefore,

Developers mostly not interested in
developing for Indian market.

Consumer gets old generation apps with poor
provisioning.

And the cycle continues ....

11. HOW CAN THE ECOSYSTEM
IMPROVE?

12. Unlearn the lessons of MVAS

Apps are not ringtones or wallpapers!

Apps are not a single mass market

‘Push’ model won’t work

‘Search’, ‘Discoverability’ and
‘Provisioning’ matter

Understand the ‘Long Tail’ of mobile apps

13. Attract the best developers

The best mobile developers don’t work
for you – Accept the truth.

Make Rev share attractive. ( hint: 20% cut
after 3 months does not work)

Create the feedback loop.

Create and Promote the developer brand.

14. Emerging market trends
“But unlike North America, where users with high-end
smartphones are happy to plunk down a few dollars for
a time-killing casual game,
growth in emerging markets will lean more
heavily on productivity apps used by consumers
who don’t have regular fixed-line Internet
service.
And app developers and distributors will be tasked with
finding ways to monetize their wares beyond simple
one-off purchases.”
- Quoted from
gigaom.com

15. Apply Indian Consumer trends

The Indian consumer

is value conscious

is not an impulsive buyer

bases buying decisions on trust (through word of
mouth, internet search and social media)

changes handsets & SIM cards

16. Partner, Partner, Partner

Software and Telecom are
different businesses

Independent players like Mobikwik.com
create multiple advantages:

Developer Engagement

Piloting and Feedback loop

Pulse on Macro and Micro Consumer-trends

17. Q&A

Email me - bipin [at] mobikwik.com

for a copy of this presentation

for partnership meetings

for job opportunities

Follow me on Twitter

twitter.com/mobikwik