Indian digital payments and financial services company headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, PhonePe has disclosed plans to build a localized app store for the Indian market, as it seeks to challenge Google’s dominance.
According to an internal company document, the app store will be designed to offer hyper-localized services based on customer context and aims to assist developers with high-quality user acquisition through multilingual solutions. The app store will also offer a premier experience for millions of users with high-quality advertisements and custom targeting support for 12 languages and 24/7 live chat.
Speaking on the startup plan to roll out an App Store, the company said,
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“Google commands 97% of the Indian app store market and there is an opportunity for a company like PhonePe, which has amassed over 450 million registered users in the country, to build an alternative app store that is more localized not just from a language perspective but also from a discovery and consumer interest perspective.
“All The OEMs are excited about PhonePe building out a localized App Store for the Indian market. We expect to be live on Android OEMs within the first few months of launch. We have already closed terms with one of the largest OEMs and are trying to get the others rapidly onboard over the next couple of months”.
The app store is the latest product push from PhonePe, which recently also entered the e-commerce category. The startup proposed plan to build an app store is coming after the Indian antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) last year October, ordered Google to make a series of changes, such as refraining from agreements that ensure exclusivity of its search services and mandatory pre-installation of its apps.
This decision was cheered by startups in India following the Supreme Court decision to uphold an antitrust order that forces Google to change how it runs its popular Android platform, which they believe the ruling would open the market for rivals and boost competition.
Also, in March 2023, PhonePe raised an additional $200 million in primary capital from Walmart, as it plans to deploy these funds to build scale new businesses like Insurance, Wealth Management, Lending, Stockbroking, ONDC-based shopping, and account aggregators.
Founded in December 2015, by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, the PhonePe app is available in 11 Indian languages. Using PhonePe, users can send and receive money, recharge mobile, DTH, and data cards, make utility payments, pay at shops, invest in tax-saving funds, and liquid funds, and buy insurance, mutual funds, and digital gold.
Within three months of launch, the app was downloaded by over one crore users. In 2018, PhonePe became the fastest Indian payment app to get a five-crore badge on the Google Play Store. In January this year, the fintech startup declared the completion of its domicile shift to India and the full separation from Flipkart. The company also announced a partnership with Cloudflare to secure the mobile transactions made through its services. In February, PhonePe became the first fintech platform to enable cross-border UPI payments.